Some See the Stars: A MAD Journey

By Archana Rao-D'Cruz

This book is a first person narrative non-fiction that chronicles the lives of institutionalised children and traces the evolution of an organization called Make A Difference (MAD) that works with them.
In 2006, MAD was founded to ensure equitable outcomes for institutionalised children. 2006 was also the year that Archana Rao-D’Cruz moved to Kochi, joined MAD as a volunteer teacher and began working at a street shelter for boys called Sneha Children’s Home. Working with the young MAD volunteers gave her an insight into the making of the current generation of Indians. It was inspiring to see the passion and commitment that young Indians were capable of and their willingness to take on the daunting task of rehabilitating 20 million Indian children who are in need of institutionalised care.
While this book is written primarily to bring the cause of institutionalised children into focus, it also shines the spotlight on those working relentlessly to make this a better world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Notion Press
• Release date: Feb 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9789352067510

Book preview

Some See the

Stars

A MAD Journey

Archana Rao-D’Cruz

Notion Press

Old No. 38, New No. 6

McNichols Road, Chetpet

Chennai - 600 031

First Published by Notion Press 2016

Copyright © Archana Rao-D’Cruz 2016

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 978-93-5206-751-0

This book has been published in good faith that the work of the author is original. All efforts have been taken to make the material error-free. However, the author and the publisher disclaim the responsibility.

No part of this book may be used, reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The incidents in this book are real, and have been written down by the author to the best of her knowledge. While all facts and information shared has been duly verified and is accurate to the best of the author’s knowledge, any inaccuracy in fact or record that may be found is inadvertent and unintended. As this is a real account, protection of original identities of certain individuals has been made a priority, which has motivated the author to use changed names to represent these individuals.

Contents

Title

Copyright

Note

Acknowledgements

1. Welcome to Kochi

2. A MAD Story

3. Through the Looking Glass

4. Unclenching the Fist

5. The Jugaad Years (2006 to 2008)

6. Munna

7. The Quantum Leap (2009)

8. Dealing With Pain

9. The Inflection Point (2010)

10. Return of the Prodigal

11. Picking up the Pieces

12. New Beginnings

13. Many MAD Moments

14. That Glass House Next Door

15. The Mentorship Project

16. The Making of an Institutionalised Child

17. Rewriting Stories

18. Make A Difference (2014–2015)

19. Some See the Stars

Appendix 1: MAD Values

Appendix 2: MAD Organisational Structure (2014–2015)

Appendix 3: MAD Programmes (2014–2015)

Appendix 4: Junior’s Facebook Post (April 21, 2012)

Acknowledgements

To the children at Sneha Children’s Home and the volunteers at Make A Difference (MAD). This book, and so much more, has been made possible by your presence in my life. A special shout-out to Kamal Nair, Tarun George, Kuruvilla Chacko, Vaibhav Panpaliya, Binny V.A., Sujith Varkey, Gloria Benny and Jithin Nedumala for your time and patience. Thank you, Jithin Krishnan, for sharing this journey with me. Thank you, Sumi Thomas (DropCap Media), for all your creative inputs.

All my writing comes from having had a mother whose idea of interior decoration was wall-to-wall book shelves and a father who truly believed that women hold up half the sky. Thank you, Amma and Anna. I must not fail to thank my extended Rao and D’Cruz family, since they are likely to kill me if I forget to mention them.

Finally, my eternal gratitude to the people who lend wings to all my dreams: Elvis, Ashwin, Yohann, Viji, Shantanu, Chitra and Srikanth.

As critical and judgmental as we often must be, as much as we will have to correct, as truly as we must face unpleasant realities all of our days, let us recognise and praise the thousands of beauties of life around us; the many wonderful examples of virtuous living; the strengths and the courage of so many souls; the exceptional talents and achievements of our family members, neighbours, and associates; the countless blessings that we have been given. As has been quoted by so many, but seems to fit well here, ‘Two men look out through the same bars: One sees the mud and one, the stars.’

Frederick Langbridge

Chapter 1

Welcome to Kochi

It was 2006. I had just moved to Kochi from Bangalore. It was my first day at my new school in Kochi and I had to perform my first duty as a class teacher.

All the students had gathered in the assembly hall, accompanied by their parents. I had to collect the children in my class, by calling out their names over the mic. A simple enough task, except that nobody had taken into account my unfamiliarity with the mindboggling tongue-twisters that local names in Kerala can be. The expression on the faces of the parents was definitely a series of Kodak moments—changing from mild surprise to shocked disbelief—as I sweated past Kochouseph, Chittilappilly, Geevarghese, Thamarapilly and clawed my way through Pottankulam, Vachaparambil, Chettiparambil after crawling painfully over Padinjarekalathil and Kulathuvayalil. There was a collective exhalation of relief when I finished and the next teacher almost received a standing ovation, merely for reciting student names correctly.

I fared no better with local addresses (Ezhupunna, Thiruvaniyoor, Kochangadi), bus stops (Kathrikadavu, Valanjambalam), festivals (Karkidakavavu, Attachamayam), flowers (Thumpa poovu, Kanikkonna). In Malayalam, nothing was pronounced as it was transliterated in English; mainly because the gargling sounds required to speak the language had no phonetic equivalent in the English alphabet. So, I grappled with ‘Z’s which were pronounced as guttural, rolling ‘R’s, ‘R’s which sounded like ‘Y’s and required flinging of the tongue deep into the throat and ‘N’s that sounded like nothing on this earth. The difficulty of the language was directly proportional to my poor language ability. In effect, it was almost a year before I picked up even the rudiments of Malayalam.

In hindsight, there was plenty to laugh about. If my sense of humour had been in place. If I had not been so desperately unhappy.

There were, of course, reasons! The first few months after moving to Kochi, I was miserable because the weather was hot and sticky. Then, I wept because it was bleak and wet. The summer of my discontent melted into the monsoon of my discontent and my unhappiness simply bubbled over unabated from one season to another.

My husband was happy with the move—he liked his new job and was closer to his parents, who lived in Kochi. My kids loved the new school and the new apartment. It seemed to me that I was the only one who had incurred a loss. Misery hates loneliness. So I wept some more: for the decade-worth of love, friendship and support I had left behind in Bangalore, and for the comfort of familiar language and routine.

Kochi was a town that was held together very strongly by the local culture and language, and it was easy for a non-Keralite like me to become the perpetual outsider. It was one of the few places in India where Bollywood had not left its mark. There was only one theatre in town that played Hindi and English movies and these ran barely a week, to half-empty houses.

Not knowing Malayalam, I had to depend on my husband for even little transactions with the local populace. He had to step in as an interpreter and translator in my daily dealings with the maid, the electrician, the plumber, the courier, the building security and what-have-you. I felt robbed of the little freedoms I had always taken for granted and it was a confidence-shattering experience.

On a daily basis, I was embroiled in a language-related situation that left me seething in fury. At every given opportunity, I called my friends in Bangalore and snivelled pathetically over the phone. I steadily hated the town till I could barely stand to live in it.

As a teacher, my classroom time with the students was as delightful as ever. But, in the staffroom, I messed it up rather badly. Since it was an English-medium school, English was the language of classrooms and official transactions. But true to local form, every teacher slipped into the local lingo the moment she slipped out of her professional avatar. Shrinking back into defensive mode was hardly the answer but that is exactly what I did. So while the staffroom reverberated with laughter and easy talk, I was never part of any of the hilarity. I either sat around quietly with a vague smile plastered to my face or moved into my corner and got on with notebook correction. Of course, there was always a third option which I often fantasised about. Getting up and cutting through the babble with a shout of, what the f***? But thankfully, even in the blackest of moods, I knew that the Rambo approach was not the best option. The truth was that I had allowed language to become a barrier between me and any potential friends. But that was not how I saw it then because I was too busy wallowing in my isolation.

And so it went, sobbing and moaning my way through six months. Half the year had gone by and my life did not seem to be getting any better.

And then one dark, wet, September evening, on the way to the library, I saw a notice plastered on the wall. It was a very basic and rather shabby notice seeking volunteers for teaching. Close scrutiny revealed the name of the organisation—MAD. Closer scrutiny revealed that this was an acronym for Make A Difference. By now, my nose was nearly touching the wall and so I decided to seek further details over the phone number provided.

It was a rather vague resolve and I did not really pursue it for over a week. But strangely enough, even after a week, the phone number I had merely glanced at was firmly embedded in my memory. At the best of times, I am a firm believer in signs and this was one I could not ignore.

A soft, young voice introduced himself as Sabarish, the Human Resources (HR) representative of MAD. He answered my queries about the organisation and its goals. Their modus operandi, he explained, was to enhance the quality of education children received at shelter homes, mainly through English teaching. Fine words and designations; it all seemed very well-organised and above-board. In reality, the organisation did not even have a shoestring, let alone a budget. All they did have was delusions of grandeur. But of course, I learned this much later.

When he heard that I was a teacher, Sabarish perked up considerably and asked me to come to the centre where he worked on weekends. This was a shelter home for boys called Sneha Children’s Home, about fifteen minutes away from my house.

But the same day, in fact within the hour, I received another call from MAD. This was from a guy called Jithin who introduced himself as the President of MAD. I wondered what I had done to merit this kind of attention but I did not have to wonder long. I was asked two questions: if I knew any rich parents, and, if I could get them to part with their money! Nice. Here I was offering my invaluable teaching talent and there he was, looking at me merely as a conduit to lay his hands on some money! But his honesty was refreshing and his naivety was rather touching. So I fobbed him off with some vague assurances and thought no more of it.

But Jithin was not one to be so easily dismissed. When I reached Sneha Children’s Home that weekend, there he was—a book in hand, encircled by a group of kids. When he stood up to meet me, I realised that he was a giant. At six feet and four inches, he towered over me and it was an unusual experience for me. With an above average height, I was generally the one who did all the towering.

So, there he was, a tall, skinny young man in jeans and a bright orange kurta, a little boy slung across his shoulder. His black-rimmed glasses failed miserably in lending any seriousness to a face that had a wicked smile and audacity written all over it. While we smiled and chatted for a while about MAD, he seemed oblivious to the little boy gamely climbing all over him and tugging at his hair and clothing. And then as expected, the talk meandered back to obtaining funding for MAD. Jithin was very hopeful of getting funds for MAD, if I could spread the word about the organisation among the parents at my school. Again, I was struck by his naivety in assuming that the only reason for MAD not getting funds was their lack of visibility in public space. If only people knew about their agenda, he implied, they would rush up to them and thrust notes into their hands.

He spoke eloquently about the organisation and his passion for the cause was both contagious and exhilarating. In his world, there were only wild ambitions and no space for failures.

I gazed at him in wonder!

Oh my God, I thought. He wants to save the world.

I was caught completely off-guard. Saving the world was supposed to be the agenda of an eight-year-old zooming around with a towel knotted around the neck. Adults were supposed to outgrow these childish whimsies of playing the caped crusader. But here he was, a miraculously untainted grown-up, still holding on to the dream we all eventually shed—of being a hero and saving the day.

But before I could dwell further on the thought, Jithin was back to pushing his agenda: wrangling money out of the parents in my school!

I hemmed and hawed for a while, all the time avoiding eye contact.

Then I began, I think I could get some teachers from my school to come in and help out…

He cut me short. "That wouldn’t work well. You see we always have problems with old…er [he eyed me and made the quick modification] volunteers. They generally do nothing but give us gyan and find faults with us. Besides, we have a cut-off age for volunteers in our organisation—twenty-five years. He concluded with a flourish. (At the time, MAD was running a recruitment campaign for new volunteers that ran along the lines of Adults have screwed up! It is up to us now! Looking back at the campaign now, Jithin shakes his head and sighs. So much drama?")

I looked down and tried hard not to laugh. He had meant to offend but it was difficult to take offence at so obvious an act. This felt like a conversation with one of my brash Grade 3 kids, the ones habituated to checking the limits and pushing boundaries. I was thoroughly amused; in fact, I remember smiling all the way home.

But there was also a feeling of sweet sadness—like the resurfacing of a never-quite-forgotten childhood love. The feeling lingered all through the week and finally, that weekend I decided to go to Sneha Children’s Home again.

I was, of course, not spending my weekend at the street shelter due to purely altruistic considerations. It was also a solution to the dreaded weekends. Weekdays were filled with school and household chores but the empty weekends… ouch!! No amount of books or TV could soothe the loneliness that gnawed painfully at me. (Plus, my presence would piss off Jithin, and that promised to be loads of fun. I was really running low on entertainment options in Kochi!!)

Little did I know that MAD would become more than a stopgap weekend arrangement. It would soon fill up my entire life and change it in ways I never thought possible.

Jithin Nedumala at Sneha Children’s Home

Chapter 2

A MAD Story

I hope it’s not going to be the same old stuff about how it all began with Jithin Nedumala! The story of MAD is much bigger than that. This was Jithin’s response when I told him that I was going to pen the story of MAD.

A typical article about MAD goes something like this: Jithin Nedumala was on a train home to Kochi from Mumbai. It is quite a long journey and he was tired. He made these trips to different cities in India frequently. He travelled for at least 200 days a year and he wondered how he was going to keep up with the pace of growth of MAD. He had just received two more requests to set up branches of MAD. While this was exciting, as CEO, he was seriously concerned about the ability of the organisation to maintain its passion for its work and to continue to provide the high quality of service to some of the most needy children in the country. Jithin reflected on the achievements and growth of MAD…

This was a Globalens case study on MAD and as usual, it began with Jithin. But that wasn’t really the beginning, at least where Jithin is concerned.

According to Jithin, not the beginning of MAD either. MAD had five initiators, all of them equally involved in conceiving Make A Difference and all of them equally committed to bringing that idea to life. In the upward struggle that the first year was, they worked together to raise funds, to recruit volunteers and to build up the organisation.

In time, they would all remain associated with MAD in various capacities—fund-raising, beginning new chapters in other cities. But after the first year, only Jithin would continue to be completely and exclusively devoted to MAD. And Kochi would be the first city where the organisation was able to establish its presence in an effective manner. So it is that the origin of MAD is synonymous with Kochi and Jithin Nedumala. While MAD has been influenced and shaped by several hands since its inception, even today, eight years down the line, the overall MAD culture (especially in Kochi) strongly reflects Jithin’s own deeply-held beliefs. So, to understand what keeps the wheels turning in MAD, it would probably be necessary to understand what makes Jithin tick.

The two traits that mark out Jithin very strongly are his deep sense of empathy and his anarchist streak. Perhaps anarchist is too strong a word; what Jithin does have is an irrepressible rebellious nature that almost always leads him to challenge the status quo. While these traits are perfectly in sync with the culture of MAD, the journey that led him here has been a long and arduous one, weaving through peer scrutiny, parental disappointment and principals’ offices.

Rewind to Jithin’s schooldays at Kendriya Vidyalaya where it was all smooth sailing till Grade 5. And then, life suddenly got exciting! Jithin entered Grade 6 with an attitude which got him into regular trouble with teachers. Being hauled off to the principal’s office soon became a routine matter. It’s difficult to say why the trouble started around that time, says Jithin. From a very young age, I found it really difficult to put my heart into things I thought were meaningless. I remember rattling the cage often enough in younger classes. But I also remember that I was open to being fobbed off with some excuse when I was younger. As I grew older, I found it increasingly difficult to study stuff that seemed irrelevant. I particularly remember the struggle I had drawing the tools used by Paleolithic man. Seriously, stone age tools?!! Can you think of an occasion when that information might come in handy? Very persuasive arguments, but his teachers were not impressed!

Whether it was a change that had been in the making or a radical transformation, the end result was that within a couple of months he had become so notorious that parents often tried to keep their wards away from his ‘corrupting influence.’

The teacher as an all-powerful figure of classroom authority bothered him. Since he was already in their bad books, challenging their authority was almost a reflexive impulse for him. He saw no wrong in letting the teacher know the truth as he saw it. After all, there were few things more amusing than tossing in a stone and watching the splash it made and ripples it created. Accordingly, the math teacher had to be made aware