Wordless Wednesday

Sathish with Judy

Many more happy returns of the day!

There is no better place to spend a birthday than with these dear, thoughtful, sweet children. They barraged me with their letters and colorful little cards. Paper is just about all they have to give. One second-grader gave me his ruler.

Just after morning assembly, they streamed to me, one after another, each with something they had drawn, cut, or glued. Then they all wanted to know why I was crying: didn't I like the gifts?

Barath in kindergarten was the first to greet me before school.

Sagayamery wrapped up her little stuffed dog. She wrote "for: Sagayamery [they always confuse "for" and "from"!], to: Mam"

    

Cute Vannamalar in second grade (notice how well they are writing unassisted in their second language, a vast improvement of late):

My only regret is that they are too many to be able to fully appreciate in one sitting, or even in a day. I still haven't made it through most of them. It'll be savoring a few a day over the next week...

Wordless Wednesday

P. Vijay and Anbarasu

Water fight

I had meandered over to the hostel to watch the water fight, not to be in it! I had blithely assumed that no one would dare get the principal wet. That assumption lasted about three seconds. For some inexplicable reason, I quickly became a main target.

The kids! Live in Coimbatore!

Kanmani

Kanmani, how I love him, my incorrigible little hoodlum! Today was a sad day steeped in worry over him. Hopefully, it'll soon work out.

Wordless Wednesday

Coimbatore by conquest

Last weekend, eighteen of our students traveled with a handful of volunteers to Coimbatore on the western edge of Tamil Nadu. They had been invited to perform three dances at a business convention, where the audience numbered in the thousands. The kids' poise and professional performance was at the same time staggering and deeply moving. There they were, my kids, on a big stage.

Keep in mind that these children hail from one-roomed hovels and that many of their parents are illiterate.

It all provided a small glimpse of the many other feats of grandeur that lie ahead of us. And it reminded me to more frequently lift my gaze from the humdrum school goings-on and to recognize how far we've come.


Left to right (more or less!): Theresa, Vinodhini, Ambiga, Soniya, Savitha, Vijayalakshmi, Shalini, Manodhaya, Malavika, Megala, and Gracy




And our dear boys: Joseph, Arun, Vimalkanth, Ashok, Krishnamoorthy, Deepenraj, and C. Vignesh




These students are the members of LifeDance, which is our school's dance troupe. Admittance is by audition and they practice five or six times a week after school. Although they've only been together for about a year and a half, they have made remarkable progress and are always a delight to watch. 

Before the big night, queuing up for gel. Our volunteer Derek serves as stylist.

Vinodhini and Gracy performed a traditional southern Indian dance, called Bharatanatyam. Vinodhini's only twelve.

Joseph and Vimal.

Handsome Deepenraj was in charge of the music, a duty he took very seriously and executed with aplomb.

Rehearsal a few hours before the show. Here's Shaun, who made it all possible. He choreographed the dances and prepared the kids for the show with less than a week's notice. We are all indebted to him for his vision and gifted teaching.

Finally, memorable personalities from the road (which, after all, lasted a seemingly interminable eleven hours):

Krishnamoorthy's father, whom we encountered on the roadside. Our route just happened to take us by his village. He was so proud of his son. 

Me! Demonstrating what to do in rural India where customers are not provided with silverware (my table mates, by the way, informed me that I was not eating adroitly at all, as I had thought, and that my high elbow is anything but graceful. So much for the proud smile).

Vimal, who never passes on a chance to be photographed. As our diet at the school is largely vegetarian, chicken's a big deal.

And others whose story you will have to imagine or conjecture...

Basha and Mariyambee in writing

Today is Mariyambee's birthday. She is a uniquely gifted and loving child. Mariyambee skipped a grade this year as it was the only way to keep her enrolled at Rising Star; her mother had decided to withdraw her and her brother Basha from school. I was worried that she wouldn't be able to keep up, but she has since risen to the top of the class in some subjects.

This is what she wrote in her journal a few days ago. She was anticipating her birthday and loves the fact she shares it with a dear friend of mine who also happens to have volunteered at Rising Star two years ago.

Our fourth-graders have an assignment to write in their journals on most school days. It has been so gratifying for me to get to read all of these, and to see vast improvement over the past year. Basha, who is featured below, was not able to write a single sentence unassisted as recently as last summer. It is beautiful to witness how even children who have been neglected for years can and do learn. Now he comes up with the following:

This particular question was rather open-ended: "What do you like to write about?" His beginning is a bit scattered, touching on computers and house-building before he settles on his topic. He wants to help people who have no hands and no legs.

Basha's father has leprosy and had a leg amputated last year. Many of their neighbors in the leprosy colony have no hands.

And the art that accompanies this journal entry, Basha's rendition of the "helping van."

The children must wonder why their journals are sometimes returned to them with little salty water marks speckled across the pages.

The road from Coimbatore