Tara

He made it!

Friday, July 30, 2010

We had left, remember, Rajesh in his trial period at the excellent but demanding Saint Mary's School.
The news is just out: Rajesh, who showed “impeccable behaviour” (come again???) and made rapid academic strides, has finally been admitted in Class 2 for complete education in the language of Shakespeare!
Well done for Rajesh, who has earned his uniform and wears it proudly, and conqueror that he is, strikes a pose bearing the colors of St Mary’s on the terrace of Tara:


(OK, we’ll have to reconsider the size of the shorts!)

posted by Tara at 7:11 PM 0 Comments

Rajesh and the autos

Sunday, July 11, 2010

« Auto » is the short form for autorickshaw, those mototaxis that criss-cross Delhi. We are just leaving the doctor who underlined the difficulties for Rajesh to locate himself in space and time. It’s time for an immediate exercise: Rajesh is asked to bring us back to Tara.

The first auto, bad news for us, is dozing. He pleads a technical failure and goes back to the arms of Morpheus (one should not be allowed to disturb people in the middle of their nap!!!):


The second autowallah, wide awake and good-natured, proposes the fare of 60 rupees. Rajesh manages to get us a discount of 10 rupees:

posted by Tara at 7:01 PM 0 Comments

Election Day

Sunday, July 4, 2010

The children are electing their Representative, who will be part of the staff meetings and board meetings for six months.

Here are the posters of the campaign:

		Suraj promises to help the children to « make [their] dreams come true». And he completes this ambitious but maybe a little vague statement by a more concrete commitment: «If something is broken, I will have it repaired ». On can express doubts about the choice of the photo, which does not really give the impression that Suraj is going to exhaust himself with hard work... But this is the Child’s Choice, and at Tara, we respect that!
		Jaan prefers to advertise his experience and credibility as he has already taken the job in the past. Cunning, he flatters the small children (he knows that Shyamu, Kishan and Rajesh hold one ballot paper for 3 and he intends to get it) but does not forget to remind that respect is due to older children, which by the way and by an implacable logic leads to his election, as he is himself the oldest candidate.

It’s finally Jaan who wins after a count of the votes tighter than expected.

posted by Tara at 6:35 PM 0 Comments

Tara at the beach

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Sidhu and Rakesh, holidaying in South India, discover the sea for the first time ever("Sir, it’s hard to believe that there could be something beyond the immense sea"):


Among other things, they enjoyed seeing the seaside in Kerala, the elephants (a little agitated, surprising as we were expecting a more placid animal, who would have been happy to meet us), a tea plant in Ooty, and ultimate pleasure: flying ("Sir, why is there nothing in the sky, apart from the clouds??"):




Invited to the Jeevan Jyoti Shelter close to Bangalore, Rakesh, Sidhu and our trainee Caroline explain to the staff the secrets of the North-Indian chapatti, but the unflappable didis clearlt seem to prefer their good-old South-Indian chapatti:



And to go on with the North/South cultural technological transfers, our boys take a dance class, given by the girls of the institution. Sidhu is much more at ease than Rakesh, who is intensively wondering what the hell he is doing, sweating blood:

posted by Tara at 6:20 PM 0 Comments

The Computer Room

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Witnessing the passion of all the children for computers and tired of having to continuously evict the squatters from our office computers, we decided to start a dedicated room at Tara.

Motivated more than ever, the older children helped the carpenters hoist the spanking-new computer cabinets.



From now on, every Child can play and replay his favourite CD-Rom I Become Kung Fu Master at the Temple of the Dragon, that he finds as fascinating as ever, even after hundreds of viewings, despite the long suffering adult, who has time and again expressed his annoyance regarding the so-called Okinawa synthetic music which illustrates each movement of the virtual karateka wannabe.

These days, the computer room hosts a workshop on Photoshop and HTML:



The computer room of Tara is sponsored by Main Tendue and Delhi Footlights.

posted by Tara at 6:10 PM 0 Comments

Reunion

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

11 years ago in a street of New Delhi, two brothers named Sidhu and Sidhant ran… but in different directions. Two little boys separated by Destiny, never to meet again.

“I am looking for my brother”, Sidhu told us when he arrived at Tara. We helped him as much as we could but in a country of more than a billion people, how could we find Sidhant? It seemed hopeless. Then, out of the blue, a few days ago, from the NGO Deepalaya, we heard about Sidhant who was alive and well, and in Delhi! Soon the two brothers were face to face. What happened when their eyes met was indescribable...



Life, for them, is now complete. This is their story and it is with their agreement that we are publishing this picture, of their memorable reunion.

Today, Sidhant, is a 20 year old man who just passed his Class 12 exam. Sidhu is not alone in this world anymore. Miracles do happen, and we were happy witnesses to this magical occurrence of life.

posted by Tara at 4:37 PM 1 Comments