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Keeping the faith alive

Mandira Nayar

NOBLE CAUSE: Children at a Faith Foundation class near Priya cinema in New Delhi over the weekend. - Photo: Sandeep Saxena

NEW DELHI: Saddam Hussain has been coming to this class every weekend for the past few months. Quite different from the Iraqi leader now under trial, Saddam is a tiny little boy studying in Class VII with very noble dreams of being a doctor.

Diligently colouring a dinosaur with a boy in yellow, Saddam is one of 30 kids who attend this class held outside a defunct pond in front of the swanky Barista coffee outlet in Basant Lok market. Offering these children the luxury of childhood, this class started off with a few kids wanting to see how their name looks on paper. And of course, Bishalakhi Ghosh's need to try and keep the "faith".

"When we first started, all my friends said that things wouldn't work. They said that it would be a wasted effort. We had faith that we will do something and that the children would learn," she says two-and-a-half years after starting the Faith Foundation, that holds classes in the market every week.

The Foundation that is really a group of friends pooling in funds to buy crayons, paper and food, it has lived up to its name. While most people who visit the market pass by the kids there, Bishalakhi, who took her son to watch movies on Sundays at Priya cineplex, decided to help out.

An average Delhiite, Bishalakhi spends Mondays to Fridays doing a nine-to-five job with a public relations company. Over the weekends, she and her friends and family turn teachers. Her mother checks the mathematics problems the children solve in class; her son and his friends hand out photocopied pages of colouring books and crayons. Her colleagues help out with the teaching, and a doctor friend holds a camp twice a month. It is all part of a connected circle of volunteers who have joined in over time and, like the kids, their numbers keep growing. Clearly, something the children enjoy, whether it is vying with each other about who gets to serve food, or colouring fast to fill in all the pages, for those who come to the Faith Foundation class, it is about choice and ultimately about fun.

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