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I cannot not write this. I don’t think I can do justice to narrating some very tender emotions through words but something still propels me to write, at least attempt a description of some very treasured moments I had a fortune to be a witness to.
Every Tuesday, a group of students go outside the Hanuman temple in Kamla Nagar (in Delhi University) and play with kids on the footpath. These kids go to school but hail from marginalised sections and resort to weekly begging. Tuesday is the day of service at this temple and devotees throng with much zest and sweets. And these kids throng the footpath and chase the devotees to maximise their earnings both in cash and in kind (the prasad).
Every time I come to Éclair, these kids rush to me – with open arms and faces lit with rare joy and hit against me clutching my legs, some hanging on to my arms. In a matter of seconds, I am surrounded by a full mob of roaring, cheering faces welcoming me in this grand way.
However, my juniors who are now the regular faces at éclair would tell me how they have to nudge them from their places on footpath to come, and in my absence, they wouldn’t run to them the way they did on seeing me.
I would try to tell the kids every time I met them how their Oishee didi, Harman didi, Sonali didi and all others who came loved them soo… much, expecting they would return the love to them in the same way.
But probably bonds are always a function of time, a positive function of time. And my reassurances to them would not work.
It has been almost a year now. I have been away and my ultra enthusiastic juniors have been managing Éclair. This Tuesday, before departing for Oxford, I went to see them.
I was slightly before time and Oishee and others had not arrived. They saw me and rushed to me as usual, curling around me. My mom was along and I told them ‘yeh meri mumma hai’ amidst the cacophony and they hugged her too, even harder, in the same mad, violent manner.
Another moment and Oishee, Sonali and Harman arrived on the other side of the footpath. They saw them and guess what…
They ran.
To them with the same fervour and even more, shouting ‘Didi,Didi’. A whole sea of cute faces leaving their prasad at the temple and running to ones they love so deeply. Surrounding them, pulling them, shaking hands, shaking them.
I can’t express the exponential joy of witnessing the scene – the joy of witnessing a love bud sprouting, the joy of seeing a whole coterie of people expressing their innermost feelings. Its as if something flows across individuals through those gestures – some divine vibes as if.
And then while they played dog-and-the-bone with Harman and Sonali as team captains, I noticed the cute Roshni clinging on to Harman caressing her arm with her hand occasionally while watching the game.
You know what, these kids don’t really come to éclair for just the sweets or the fun of playing games, they come for love – for the sincere care and affection, for having someone who listens to them and brings out the child in them after all the hardships of living in poverty.
…
Okay, I feel really incomplete. I started writing this post to describe that scene of kids running shouting Didi, didi. I doubt if I conveyed the intensity of that scene in its true form. I feel like an old worn-out Kodak camera that could not capture a beautiful scene of nature through its tinted lens. In search of a DSLR which can capture those moments better. Somebody like my friend Priyanka Dass Saharia would do an amazing job capturing it with her writing skills. Or probably writing isn’t a good idea, can anyone actually go and capture the scene with a real video camera?
It happens every Tuesday.
Around 5 pm.
Outside FMS.
Opposite Hanuman Temple in Kamla Nagar.
You should go see it for yourself, really :)
Some pics from that day, of the eclair class in progress.
