2005 bat mich eine Kommilitonin, während meiner Indienreise doch mal in Sarnath, einem buddhistischen Pilgerort in einer armen Gegend Nordindiens, eine Schule für kastenlose und unterprivilegierte Kinder zu besuchen. Sie wußte, daß ich Webseiten gestalte, und die Schule benötigte dringend eine, um für Spenden zu werben. Im März 2005 war ich dort und hörte die mitreißende Geschichte von Rajan und ihrer Schule.

Rajan Kaur Saini

heißt die Gründerin von Buddha’s Smile School. Sie und ihr Mann Sukhdev haben eine wirklich bewegte Geschichte hinter sich. Sie ist ausgebildete Montessori-Pädagogin aus Kalkutta, Sukhdev stammt aus Bombay und betreibt direkt neben der Schule ein kleines Restaurant, dessen Küche auch die Schulkinder versorgt. Die beiden haben – ungewöhnlich in Indien – aus Liebe geheiratet. Das mag romantisch klingen, ist aber ein äußerst drastischer Entschluß, auch gegen Gebote der Tradition und Religion: es bedeutet für Rajan, aus ihrer Familie verstoßen zu sein, aber auch, ihrer Religion, dem Hinduismus, zu entsagen: »eine Religion, die Liebe nicht zuläßt, ist nichts für mich,« sagt sie. Zudem gab es keine Mitgift, keine eingerichtete Wohnung, wie es sonst bei indischen Hochzeiten üblich ist und was neuverheirateten Paaren eine wirtschaftliche Basis bietet. Rajan und Sukhdev hatten buchstäblich nichts.

Buddha’s Smile School

Ein Onkel Sukhdevs aus der Nähe von Sarnath ließ sie bei sich wohnen. Rajan arbeitete einige Jahre in der staatlichen Dorfschule, bis sie zunächst einen Kindergarten für die armen Kinder gründete und daraufhin ihre Schule – um »ihren« Kindern aus dem Kindergarten überhaupt den Schulbesuch zu ermöglichen. Der ist in Indien nicht kostenlos, zudem werden die Kinder der untersten Kasten oder Kastenlose von vielen staatlichen Lehrern einer Ausbildung nicht für würdig befunden.

80 Kinder aus den umliegenden Dörfern wurden innerhalb von drei Jahren an der Schule aufgenommen.

Rajans Herzlichkeit und Liebe umfängt jeden Besucher unmittelbar. Es ist unheimlich beeindruckend, mit welch unerschöpflicher Hingabe und Kraft sie ihr Leben diesem Anliegen ihres Herzens widmet.

Ein Jahr später…

…im Februar 2006, waren es nicht mehr 80 Schüler. Die Schule war in nur einem Jahr auf nahezu 200 Kinder angewachsen. Weitere 250 Kinder standen auf der Warteliste.

Schwierigkeiten

Eine Hilfsorganisation konnte die Kosten für die vier Kleinbusse, die die Kinder aus den umliegenden Dörfern zur Schule bringen und wieder heimfahren, nicht mehr übernehmen. Es war ein kalter Winter (d.h. in Nordindien auch mal unter 5°C). Die Kinder kamen dennoch: sie nahmen die Mühe auf sich und liefen zur Buddha’s Smile School nach Sarnath, zum Teil sieben Kilometer quer übers Land, zum Großteil barfuß und nicht sonderlich warm gekleidet. Rajan organisierte, nach einer wärmenden Mahlzeit, Kleidung und Schuhe. Glücklicherweise konnte die Hilfsorganisation nach drei Monaten wieder genug Geld für die Fahrten spenden.

Die Kinder wissen die Liebe und Fürsorge, die sie in der Buddha’s Smile School erhalten, wirklich zu schätzen. Sie wissen, daß ihnen mit der Ausbildung ein besseres Leben ermöglicht wird, als ihre Eltern jemals hatten.

Spenden

sind die einzige Einnahmequelle der Schule: sie ermöglichen Essen, Kleidung, medizinische Versorgung, Unterrichtsmaterial, Baumaßnahmen, Bezahlung der Lehrer und Fahrer.

Spenden lassen sich auf verschiedene Weise übermitteln. Wie steht hier:
http://www.buddhas-smile-school.org/how-to-help/

Herzlichen Dank im Namen von Rajan und »ihren« Kindern!
Christof Glaser

PS. Im Sommer 2005 begann ich, die Internetseite einzurichten. Noch bevor ich damit fertig wurde, kontaktierte mich John Holman, ein Web-Designer aus Sydney: er hatte von der Schule gehört, wollte ihr eine Webseite erstellen und fand meine Baustelle. Zwei Wochen später war die Seite fertig – und John läßt sie seitdem gedeihen.

In a confined area. Less than 200 m2. 220 Untouchables carry of their daily studies. They sit on small benches, and share tables with at least 4 others. The classes are from the 1st grade to 5th grade. They share their classes with at least 20 other students, and as previously mentioned not a lot of space… to even stretch your legs.

When we arrived. The only knowledge we had of the place was: it was a school for beggar children and we expected to be consumed by the masses of children that would see their chance in getting some money, from a couple of tourists.

Fact was, we arrived there with no previous notice, the children were all seated in their classes, and the youngest seated on the outside, having time to play child games. Not a single child, rose from their position, and headed for us. Definitely on the spot you could see they were well behaved.

School passed and off they went home. Grade by grade was aligned, and all well organized they went into the rickshaw’s that would transport them back “Home”.

Not that all the other previous impressions were special, but one did really stand out. This was special. Never do I believe I will see such a thing again. Two children from one of the lower grades were crying. Not because they had fought. But because they did not want leave. I will not refer to the place where they came from as their home. To them it did not feel so. At the place where they live, they were the income generators. The ones that cook, clean care for their parents their brothers and sisters. These kids were the ones that had to serve for their parents. They had to go to streets and beg, they were the ones that were treated as animals. Not in the streets, but in their homes.

The headmaster had countless examples, and just to mention one.

A girl spent half the day at school. She finished her schooling, and went of to begging. Following that she had earned an income to the family. Not much. But enough to buy rice for the family. The day was not over by then. Of course there were the daily home choirs to be done. Cleaning, washing, and caring for the young. By evening she had to cook dinner. Here she boiled the rice she had worked for during the day. By mistake, while carrying the boiled rice, she accidentally dropped the food. This girl did not get a break for the following 2 minutes or more. She was beaten in every way possible, and fists flew from all angles. She was beaten so badly, she did not show for school for some days.This was of the countless examples they had.

What was worth mentioning about this small story is the background information.

In a poor family, life is not that easy. First of all, money comes first, and the parents are willing to do anything for money.

The headmaster told us. Children are not produced, because of love, they are money earners, and the more you have the better. The more people you have to earn the money the easier it becomes. A mother with a young child is very successful. Children at a young age are well off in the begging business. They can easily earn few rupees. Their daily income would be of an avg. of 25 rupees, after having eaten from it. That is what they bring back home.

But father in general is not willing to lift a finger. Life for him is too much. If nobody offers him something, then it is extremely rare for him to search for a job, not mention, if he finds one, there has to be a substantial income. He will be the one that will lie at home, and do zero.

After all who is willing to give a beggar a job, which is willing to give a beggar anything apart from a little money and food, which in Indian society would ever trust a beggar? To him this is reason enough to decide to do nothing at all. His wife will have the same problem; even if they were to look, and find a job they would work long quantities of hours, and get a small income.

It is much easier, to sit, and only lift your hand, and get money, maybe less, but much easier. A day’s of hard labor does not pay off.

So what a hard life! There is much to think about. Therefore the father results in drinking. He will set his need first, drinking and gambling before his children’s stomach. He can not cope with the daily life, and all the problems, and needs.

These were the words of a headmaster with 15 years experience, in dealing with these people.

To make it more understandable:

1st example:

A child beggar, their income can vary from 0-70 rupees a day. That is what I was presented by the few I asked. So to say, in average something like 25 rupees per day. This in a month would result in: 750 rupees, a month.

2nd example:

A skilled weaver in Varanasi will have an income of 50 rupees per day, this in a month is 1500 rupees. Twice as much as what a beggar earns. The not so skilled weavers would earn 800 rupees a month.

Definitely it is much easier to earn money begging. You work as long as you please, you do what you want. Whiles for a weaver he has working hours. People tell me it is only 8 hours daily. But I see many working more than that. It is very hard work for very little money. But then, the father does not have to work, because he has his kids to do it for him. So of course not, they can manage to survive, so no need to stress.

Another small example about how meaningful money is. Not long ago, a father of one of the children at the school, tried to sell his daughter. Only because he was an alcoholic, a gambler, a lazy person, not willing to work. So he saw the chance of earning some quick money, get rid of another mouth to feed, and thereby tried selling his daughter. He did not even care what she would be doing, prostitution, and slavery. Did not matter!

You can say what you want. Poverty of the mind, spiritual poverty. But the fact is. An uneducated person will rarely succeed in becoming wealthier. If the will is there, for a change, it will be a hundred times harder for an uneducated, poor, beggar to change his life for the better.

There is nothing he can contribute with, in society. He does not have the basic knowledge and potential, to make it in society. He can not get a job, at a counter. He can not give to the society something that is needed. That is why they are presented with these low jobs, where working hours are long, money is low and the physical demand level is high. Never will you see an educated person, who made it past 12th grade sweeping floors, or moving garbage on the streets.

That is why education is important.

These 220 kids are not the whole of India. But they will have a much better future than their parents. They are already smarter; they are already able to write their name, read and count. The ones in school now will make sure that their younger brothers and sisters also make it to school, because they know better. They understand it is important. The biggest task this school is faced with, is actually educating the parents, and making them understand that the kids are their responsibility, they can not deny them education, and they should care much more for them.

A small proof of the importance of education:

If you were left in the middle of any major city, village. Poor or rich country. There is no possible way for you ever to reach the level of a beggar.

Why? Because you would be educated. You would know what to do. You would be smart, and aware, and find your possibilities. You would have something somebody needed. You would find a job.

Why? Because of education.

Therefore the poor will always be poor unless educated. You can give work and what ever, for them to earn more money, but the amount is limited. With education they would not beg, they would not do low income generating jobs.

Then you can argue that there are not enough jobs, but the fact is they are capable of changing their life, if given the opportunity. And there are always jobs for educated people.

Now for the first time I do actually get the meaning of education, how important it is just to read write, talk, and count.

I take it for granted. But for these kids it can definitely change their life.

Thank you Buddha´s Smile School.

Now I am grown up & still now I have a deep love for my aunty & I am proud of her and her family. Rajan, Sukhdev, 11yrs Daisy & 5 yrs Rosy, filled with so much love. My father and mother have accepted their love marriage.

As my beloved aunt Rajan is now running a free school for the poor and needy children and I visited my aunt’s place to spend my vacations.

As, on 15th of August which is our Independence day, after the flag hosting ceremony, the students of Buddha’s Smile School delivered the speech and did some dance programme. Although I speak from my own experience, I feel that all sentient beings, particularly human beings, want happiness, love and care & do not want pain & suffering. On those grounds, we have every right to be happy & to use different methods or means to overcome suffering and to achieve happier lives. I exchanged my feelings with them and also shared their thoughts and soon realised how tough their life is; so pathetic; so miserable. Poverty is a curse. I felt that these students have the determination of a mirror which never loses it’s ability to reflect in spite of it being broken into pieces.

I was observing these students and their action; suddenly tears rolled down from my eyes and I felt that really these children need love, attention, education, care for making their future bright and colourful.

From the deep core of my heart; I am feeling proud of my Rajan aunty who is sincerely doing her job with full dedication. She is very kind hearted women, who is enlightening the minds of young children. She showers her motherly affection on these needy children. According to me , only eyes speak the truth, neither the mirror nor the lips.., the person who loves can see the pain in the eyes while everyone else still believes in only smile. I have noticed , immense love, care and respect towards me from these children.

As, I am a student belonging to a middle class family with lots of hopes & big dreams in my small socket of eyes. From my childhood, the thing which stood as a obstacle in my educational career is ‘money’. But fortunately, money never motivates me, the thing which motivates me is my grade in the class. I am really impressed by the way, the students of BSS, are learning. Upon asked by my, Rajan aunty, I have got the opportunity to teach these students and I felt myself very fortunate to share my knowledge with them.

These children are ignored and not cared at all in their home. Here, in U.P I saw that untouchables and caste system is still prevailing in the society. There is a great deal to teach these children as they do not get support and guidance from their parents. We must seek our happiness in the happiness of all & regard the sorrows & sufferings of others as yours and hasten to assuage them. This is a true life.

It’s very difficult to find someone like Rajan (my aunt). It’s like opening a 1,000 shells under the sea to find one pearl. Anybody can love a rosebud it takes a great deal to love a leaf! It’s very easy to love someone who is beautiful, but love the one who can make your life beautiful…I have spend my few vacations with BSS children and provided the vocational training to them. They all were excited and curious to learn and gain the knowledge. It’s true to say that when you start caring about yourself, you start loving somebody. But when you start caring about others, somebody will start loving you. It was my first experience though it was pleasant. From these experiences my life has been enriched and I have learned many valuable things.

Priya Saini, a student of microbiology; B.SC (Honours) studying at Calcutta university (Maulana azad college) - Govt. college of West Bengal.

Our first destination was the northern city of Varanasi, one of the holiest destinations for Hindu pilgrims. Varanasi (which used to be called Benares, and before that, Kashi) is over 3,000 years old. Hindus hope to die here or at least have their ashes scattered in the Ganges river flowing through to the Bengal Bay. Their believe that doing so ensures moksha–instant union with the Universal Soul (God) and freedom from reincarnation.

Varanasi is also one of India’s most fervently politically and religiously conservative cities, and one of the poorest. It is in the state of Uttar Pradesh, considered India’s poorest region. Ten minutes north of Varanasi is Sarnath, one of the world’s most sacred sights for Buddhist pilgrims. It was here that Siddhartha Gatama (circa 563 BC to 483 BC), founder of Buddhism, gave his first sermon.

Karen Kotoske (left) and Rajan Kaur (right)

Buddha’s Smile School (BSS) is located in Sarnath and is only a short walk from the historical site where Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha delivered this first sermon. Amistad International has been the primary sponsor of this school since 2004 when BSS had only 60 students. 239 now attend this free school for the poorest of the poor children in the area.

Officially, India guarantees all children 6-14 will be able to attend school. This program is called Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. Yes the dropout rate if about 53%. The reasons for this are many: lack of teachers, poor school facilities many lack toilets and running water), lack of desks and chairs, books, play equipment, or any sort of enrichment. India has an extremely high rate of teacher absenteeism. There is also a strong component of child labor; many parents require their children to supplement the family income.

Varanasi

It took us about 12 hours in Varanasi to wonder where the women were. We saw almost none in the streets. I asked locals who seemed not to even understand my question asking, “where are the women?.” This was not a question they seemed to understand. It turns out the men buy the groceries etc. so the women have no need to go outside the home. The women are, essentially, in purdah, or seclusion in their hovels, and dingy cramped apartments. There were one or two working at the desk in the hotel, but no women were hotel maids, waitresses, or selling in retail shops.

While we were in Varanasi, a terrorist was arrested under a bridge, he had plastic explosives he was planning to detonate. We read in the papers that there were terrorists all over India at work during our trip. The US press doesn’t often mention the various religious and political groups that are at constant war in India.

But the most incredible news we read while in India was the enormously important convention of Islamic academics and religious scholars who issued an official fatwa (decree) against all terrorist acts. They decreed that no person is to blow up him or herself trying to harm another person,and to do so is non-Moslem and a sin. Tom, who is a newspaper and TV news addict, says he saw nothing about this amazing step forward in the US press. This should have been headline news in the US.

The Ganges

Just as soon as our taxi drove us along the madness of the highway from the airport to Varanasi, John Holman (a longtime fabulous BSS volunteer from Australia) and Dana Kornberg, who works at the Clinton Foundation in Delhi (and is of the youngest volunteers who has been helping BSS founder Rajan Kaur since the beginning) took us to the Ghats , steep stone and concrete steps which lead from town steeply down to the Ganges river. Along the ghats are many Hindu temples and guest houses, destination for the dying, pilgrims and tourists. The Ganges ghats are where people come to bathe, wash their clothing, and bring their dead to burn.

The Main Ghat and the Ganges river

The Ganges is quite low and in fact there were Save the River demonstrations this week. During Monsoon it will or may raise 40-50 ft up the steep ghats and flood the city. India is making new dams along the Ganges, and of course Varanasi grows with more citizens, so they have a water shortage in non-monsoon seasons. The fate of a dying Ganges was the cover story on a recent National Geographic.

We hired a row boat man to take us at sunset to the ghat where they perform Puja at sunset. At sunset, with the lights, and the flames, and song, it was all dramatic from vantage point of being on the river.

We then walked up through the shopping areas taking an auto rick shaw (an open three wheel vehicle driven by fearless men) through the congested traffic back to our hotel, Taj Ganges.

Buddha’s Smile School

Early on our second day in Varanasi we went to Rajan Kaur’s Buddha’s Smile school, first having a pancake breakfast served by Rajan’s husband, Sukdev, who owns the Sarnath cafe, a clean (and delicious) dining destination for international students at the Buddhist Institute across the street. At 8:30 we jumped into the the new school van (recently purchased by Geir Davidson and his Norwegian community), a brand new Indian Tata Bus that would normally seat 12 adults. BSS squeezes in a lot more than that!

We had the great fun of traveling that morning in the new school bus. I wish the Norwegian donors of the bus could have been with us. This trip was exciting for we visitors and even more so for the children we were picking up. The kids were thrilled to have visitors showing up in their new school bus.

School Bus donated by the people of Etne, Norway

We were able to meet some of the parents of the students who live in nearby neighborhoods. Perched right on the roadside, their homes are made of grass, plastic sheeting, rock, mud, and sit only feet from cars and auto rickshaws, carts and motorcycles whizzing by. Their cooking, bathing, all of life is done looking at the wheels of cars, tailpipes of buses, and bicycle rickshaw drivers’ feet. The air they breath is vile.

One forward-thinking family had placed their home by a public water spigot where a large, 10X20 pool had formed, algae growing over it. No doubt a mosquito breeding pond also. This is the community’s all-purpose watering spigot for cooking, drinking and bathing, and washing clothing. The women were hanging clothes to dry on the brick “tree saving” enclosures wrapped around saplings, part of a Varanasi, Delhi and Kolkata ‘green India program” in which a huge public works program has planted millions of trees hoping to clean India’s air. The brick enclosures are needed to protect the saplings from the cows roaming everywhere one can imagine.

Three young teen girls, about 13, came over to us to shyly greet us. They don’t go to Rajan’s school but are either family or live near the children that do come to Buddha’s Smile School. The girls were dressed in raggedy clothing and were pretty dusty looking. Rajan told me these girls are at very serious risk for prostitution. They, along with other young girls from Rajan’s school, work at weddings, carrying candles atop their heads for 8-10 hours, all evening into the early AM, for only a few cents pay. The girls are at risk for attack by predatory drunk male wedding attendees. This is of concern to Rajan.

Rajan would like to be able to provide a training for these and other young girls in handcraft, or sewing, or other practical skill so that they don’t have to work at the weddings or even worse alternatives.

Across from the spigot, there was one especially pathetic little thatch falling down lean to, about 4X5 ft in size. Rajan told me that one of her young students had lived there until the previous week when her grandmother, with whom she lived in the shack, had died. Some relative had taken the girl away to a family member in the countryside. I asked what happened to the grandmother after she died, did anyone provide the firewood for her to be burned? Rajan told me that “No, her body, like the other poor, was just dumped into the Ganges without burning.”

BSS physical layout is difficult to describe. It is a warren of unplastered brick rooms, built one after another when cash is available. Rajan and Sukdev have personally sacrificed their meager cafe earnings to do some of the the building, and donors have done the rest. The seven classrooms are long narrow three sided rooms, open to the air, windowless, cement floored, lit by one bulb. A blackboard is on the wall at one end. Most of the children sit on the floor (desks needed in some rooms). Student artwork adorn the walls.

In front of the two layers of classrooms is a small courtyard about 20X20. A gate to the street closes in front of this courtyard. The courtyard is where the children pray together en masse in the morning, asking God to bless them. At noon, the children return to the courtyard for their one meal of the day, thanks to the French Association, L’Arche de Dolanji. For most of the students this is their only meal of the day. Because of this meal, most of the children are energetic and healthy. Though a few who seemed in poor health.

One child named Kishan, a boy of 12, eldest child of his family, had tried to commit suicide the day before by swallowing pesticide. His unemployed parents, often out looking for work, are often not at home. The child’s despondency that his parent could not feed the family overcame him. Rajan was able to take him to the hospital in time to save his life. He wrote a letter to his parents before taking the poison, begging them not to burn his school papers or school books (when they would burn his body.) Kishan’s final words were “God is satisfied with my work. Don’t burn my school papers.” This child, like her other students, considers school their only place of peace and happiness in their lives.

Kishan had no last name when he came to school. Rajan gave him the last name Kumar just as she does the many other students who have no last names.

Visiting the Bangladeshi Refugee Community in Varanasi

Later that day we visited a slum community (which are called jhuggis) of Bangladeshi refugees (The Bangladesh government mowed down some poor communities and many fled to India. Bangladesh is only hours from Varanasi by train, sharing a border with India. India has, to some small degree, absorbed these hapless nomads (at least temporarily) several miles away in Varanasi, 19 of whose children are now students at BSS. Their housing was primitive. I saw only one one water spigot for the entire community. Women were bathing, fully clothed, washing through and under their saris as discreetly as a person could with dozens of people all around.

(Jumping ahead while I am writing about how women bathe and launder: In Kolkata the women have to get up in the middle of the night to bathe at the spigots. There the cultural norms is that no one is supposed to view the women bathing even though they do wear their saris while bathing. The men, on the other hand, strip down to their shorts and bath on the dirty sidewalks, which the women are pounding the family’s laundry on the same dirty betel nut stained, cigarette butt-strewn, urine encrusted sidewalks. They have to do the laundry where the water spigots are located. From time to time I’d see a hand pump for water. It is clear that almost no one in India we saw has running water in their homes.

Electricity, when anyone has it, is sent through a dangerous snaky mess of illegal wires. We saw the results of dangerous community electrification later that day at Buddhas’ Smile School.

BSS student, Amit Kumar, 12, was one of five children standing under electrical lines when the lines collapsed onto them. Three children were electrocuted to death, Amit and another child survived the electrocution. Amit was badly burned on his leg, arm and neck. His left leg is in need of a scar release surgery and hopefully Rajan can find a surgeon to do this surgery with Amistad’s help. The leg is permanently bent. Amit’s biggest sorrow is that he can’t stand for prayers with the other boys.

A problem arose we were leaving the Bahgladeshi refugee community. A local Indian community politician came over to the van and lit into Rajan for encouraging the Bangladeshi children to come to her free Buddha’s Smile school.

The local Indians, who let the (illegal immigrant) Bangladeshi squat in their neighborhood do so because the Bangladeshi families are doing the worst of the worst jobs, the ones that even poor Indians don’t want to do. And they do NOT want the Bangladeshis to learn to read and write.

Most of Rajan’s students must work before or after school, or both. Some of Rajan’s little Bangladeshi students scour their area of Varanasi picking up garbage before dawn in the morning and again after school, selling the recyclable materials (plastic, cardboard, cans) for 9 cents American per pound, (5 rupees per kilo). Rajan’s Bangladeshi students also make pies from cow dung, baking them in the sun and then carefully store them in round piles for sale as cooking fire fuel.

Visiting Varanasi’s Rajghat Leper Community

Our visit to Rajghat, a community set aside for families with leprosy, was a deeply moving experience. Twenty of their children attend BSS and the families would like to send many more to school if there were room at BSS. There is not room for more.

We parked the school van in vicinity of the Rajghat train station. The rails run alongside the leper colony. We walked about 200 ft. over a dirt rough area downhill to a long paved narrow street, about 15 ft wide. On each side were small one room homes, opening to the street. The homes had no doors or windows. The families have public lives.

I was first of all impressed by the cleanliness of the Rajghat street. It wasn’t long before I felt the deep sense of caring the families have for one another, and especially the joy and pride they have in their children. Grandfathers without hands carried their grandchildren with pride and tenderness. Young mothers brought their children to be photographed. Many of the teenagers asked me to take their pictures.

These kids were as cool as teens are everywhere, dressed in jeans and t-shirts. One group of boys brought their bike to be included in the photo. Two teen boys, their hair well greased, hugged just as two opposite gender lovers would, in Indian fashion, for their photo. Indian men walk the streets holding hands, and teen boys hugging is a social norm.

At Rajghat leper colony, about 50% of the adults and 15% of the children have leprosy (Hansen’s disease) caused by the Mycobacterium leprae. Though children are more susceptible than adults to contracting the disease, this is not a highly contagious disease and those in treatment are almost not at all infectious. This disease take a very long time of continual physical contact to develop.

The adults and children, elders, came pouring from their homes, crowding around Rajan, They are crazy about her. She is probably the only human being from the outside world who truly loves them. BSS is providing a free education for 20 of their children, but they begged her to take in more (as did the Bangladeshi families in the other neighborhood.) When I heard the parents’ desperation for their children to be educated I could understand why Rajan opened BSS to twenty more students. If only we could wave a magic wand (over the world’s billionaires?) and build a larger school on a nice big piece of land! If only the Amistad donors who’ve helped BSS could have been standing there with me, they’ve have been covered with goose bumps of happiness seeing what hope an elementary education brings to these, the most humbled of humanity.

I asked Rajan how the families earn money for food and clothing. She told me some are beggars. Without hands and or feet, what manual labor could they do? They did not ask us for money. They treated us as honored guests, and as equals, with great dignity.

One moment I won’t forget was seeing a handsome young man of about 25 years, a resident of the leper colony, who is the village medic. He set himself up in one of the small rooms along the street and tenderly changed the bandages of the hands and feet of those who were in need of this service. This was a work of extreme humility and my heart was touched to the core. He asked Raj for more bandage supplies and John Holman was about ready to break out his wallet when Raj quietly said “no, let me handle this later.” Rajan will know how much to give and when.

That same day Raj and her teachers handed out the large quantity of new, or like new clothing (underwear, trousers, jackets and medical supplies) which Melanie had brought from her prayer group in West Los Angeles. The teachers put the clothing on right over the childrens’ uniforms (think camisoles, and undershirts over red checked uniforms) The kids were just beside themselves with happiness. I don’t think that every single child got a piece of clothing but those that didn’t seemed to be pretty excited anyway just to be a part of this event. We surely do thank Melanie’s prayer group.

Rajan has a pressing need (but no space) to open a small hostel for some of her students who live in situations of extreme violence or neglect. Perhaps this can be done someday when land next door can be purchased.

Amistad will be providing funds for Rajan to build two more classrooms. The building will begin in spring. Amistad provided funds for the digging of a well, and the water began to flow while we were there. The school will no longer be at the mercy of the unreliable city water system. The school has a backup generator to pump the water from the well into the faucets.

What Rajan and Sukdev are accomplishing on a financial shoestring is nothing short of miraculous. Their monthly budget for educating 239 students, including nine teachers’ salaries, is just under $2,500 USD, remarkable by Western standards and prices. They are careful with every rupee.

With brightly shining eyes the children say goodbye to Rajan and the other teachers at the end of the day. And with brightly shining eyes they wave back when leaving in the rikshaws Rajan has organized to bring them home. Home means those places where they had been picked up, the places where the poorest of the poor live - on the street! Their parents have no future other than going for alms; they think they need their children to beg in order for them to survive. What a gift it is for these children to find shelter in “Buddha’s Smile School.” It is a gift to them that they will not understand until they grow up. It is love from Rajan they feel and it is this love that shines forth brightly from their eyes. It is this love that enables them to realize their humanity; it makes them feel welcome in this world.

On the streets they would wander aimlessly, without any perspective; lost, too, are they in the tradition of accepting poverty. Here, in the school, they find a completely different world. Their teachers care for them and give them the knowledge they need in order to make better lives for themselves. What has made this path for them is the love they are shown. It is Rajan’s spirit and her courage and above all her love of God and these children that makes this school special.

We visited Buddha’s Smile School and have seen the fine effort Sukhdev and Rajan are playing on a daily basis to uplift the lives of the poor and underprivileged children. I can imagine the difficult times that they would have experienced in educating the parents to think of their young children. They are doing a great service and such selfless service deserves all the assistance one can offer.

When I left Varanasi, I promised to keep in touch and more importantly see what sort of role I could play from a distance in helping the couple fulfil their dreams and goals.

The Buddha’s Smile School was founded by Rajan Kaur Saini and her husband Sukhdev Singh Saini. Rajan was from Calcutta, and Sukhdev was from Mumbai. They met and fell in love while Sukhdev was studying in Calcutta. After they finished college, they got married against their parent’s wishes — which in most of Indian society means a lifetime of exile from the family. They moved to Varanasi, a place where neither of them knew anybody, and began their new life. Rajan found a job teaching in a local private school, but they were poor, and lived in one of Varanasi’s poorer neighborhoods. When Rajan came home in the evening, she found many poor street children who had no access to education, and she began teaching them in her front yard. Eventually, they reconciled themselves with Sukhdev’s parents, who helped them buy a small home across the street from the Tibetan Institute in Sarnath. Sukhdev started a chai stall, which grew into a small cafe, serving a diverse menu and geared towards the tastes of the Tibetans and foreigners who are studying at the Institute. Rajan left her job, and began teaching impoverished children on the ground floor of her home full time, supported by Sukhdev’s cafe. She hired a rickshaw driver to pick up the beggar children, and bring them to her home (it is amazing how many children can fit into an Indian rickshaw), but after a few months, she was running out of money to pay the rickshaw man. At that time, a young Fulbright scholar who was studying in Varanasi walked into their cafe. She was sick, exhausted and homesick, and like us, soon found herself adopted into Rajan and Sukhdev’s family. With the help of one of her professors, she found additional funding from the USA to support the school. Today the school has increased in size — serving over 200 children every day, all in ground floor of Rajan & Sukhdev’s very modest home.

I am not a school teacher, and I happened to be down with a cold the day my friend visited the school, so I can’t report my own impressions too far — except to say that the children are well dressed (thanks to a donation of winter clothes from a visiting philosophy professor from Iowa who, by some strange coincidence, I believe I met a few weeks earlier in Delhi), well behaved (even when they are sitting 50 children in a classroom not much bigger than an American classroom’s closet), and seem genuinely excited about learning. Imagine coming from a place where your highest aspiration might be to be a beggar or a day laborer earning starvation wages — and coming to a school where you are fed, clothed, and given access to knowledge and education. Rajan fights to keep these children in school. She walks in their slums and convinces their parents that the sacrifice of a few hours of their children’s time will pay off for them. She teaches the children not to beg, but to give. She is doing what I don’t yet know how to do — giving all of herself to serve others. I don’t know how much of her teaching works, but I do know that her two beautiful little daughters tore apart their home to find gifts to give us. Of course, when I have some money (which I don’t have right now, but that is a story for another day) I will give as much of it as I can to support Rajan’s school. I guess I hope that a few of my brave friends who have read this far into this blog will consider doing the same. I know that in Varanasi, even a small amount of money will go a long way. Rajan is the Ghandi or MLK that her little neighborhood in Varanasi needs to stand itself up. I am not convinced that a foreigner can really make such a difference on their own — but by supporting the genuine jewels like Rajan, I do believe we can began to make a dent.

There is one last piece of this story that I’ve been saving, in part because I do not know how to write about it, because it is too horrible. Rajan had a young woman working as a teacher at her school named Sangita. Last year, Sangita had an arranged marriage, and left the school. She gave birth to a baby. Four months later, she caught fire in the kitchen, and she must have burned, according to the doctors, for half an hour. All of her in-laws were home, but none of them helped her — until at last she called her brother to come help her. She was taken to a public hospital, where her sister attended to her day and night, since there was no nurse to change her bandages. Her entire body was covered with 3rd degree burns. Her in-laws refused to help with her hospital bills or give blood, but her family and Rajan gave blood, and visited Sangita in the hospital every day. Her Australian volunteer friend raised money back home, and was able to move her from the public hospital to a private hospital, where there were nurses, and antibiotics to keep her infections down. She suffered for almost a month. Again, I was not able to go see her, in part due to my own fear, in part due to a miscommunication with my friend, and in part due to my cold, but I will quote my friend’s description. It is worth adding that my friend worked as an EMT on an ambulance for 10 years before returning to school to become a teacher, and has seen all manner of medical emergencies — and should not be someone who has to worry about fainting. She came back from the hospital cold, and told me that she had never seen anything like this. She wrote:

22 days after she was burned, her face was black with 22-day-old, 3rd degree burns. Her lips and nose no longer resembled lips and nose, and her face appeared to be covered by a halloween mask. Her eyes were the only thing that let me know she was human. Two of her fingers on her left hand were burned so badly that all that remained was blackened bone. She was shivering uncontrollably, and looked to be in horrible pain. I am ashamed to say that when I walked into her hospital room and looked at her face I immediately felt nauseous and dizzy. I had to go into the next room and sit down to stop myself from fainting.

Sangita died a few days after I left Varanasi. She told the police that she did know what happened — that she had caught fire accidentally — but human bodies don’t burn for half an hour without some very strong additions of fuel. The fact that her in-laws & husband were at home when she caught fire, and that they never came to visit or offered to help her in the hospital, strongly implies that Sangita was the victim of the all too common practice of dowry burning. Her in-laws almost certainly doused her with kerosene, and then lit her on fire, in hopes of killing her so that her husband could remarry — and perhaps receive another dowry. Her refusal to implicate them in her death may have something to do with the fact that they sill have her four month old son. According to my Sen & Dreze book, there are thousands of these burnings every year in India — the vast majority go unreported. Sen & Dreze also argue that the attention paid to burnings — and the rare practice of sati (throwing a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre) — distract somewhat from the larger problem of pervasive oppression of women in north Indian society. Certainly the violence that can be directed at women, as in the case of Sangita, helps enforce their bondage. Again, I am left feeling helpless, and wondering what to do. Again, I feel that Rajan shows a path, albeit a small one, out of this darkness. I will do what I can to support her on her mission. I hope some of you will too.

Forrest Fleischman

After experiencing such poverty in both Bodhgaya and Sarnath, Buddha’s Smile School was a completely enriching and perfect experience. Meeting Rajan, we spoke of love and in her I saw a heart too big to fit in her chest. Sure enough her generosity of spirit and deep love for all the children (including her desire to develop a hostel for these desperate little ones and perhaps begin a sister school in Kolkata) was in full swing at 2007’s Independence Day Celebration. Rajan and her teachers work tirelessly to give these children a better chance in life, beginning with respect, love and an education. This experience changed my travel plans (I leave tomorrow for Kolkata to visit other schools and hostels Rajan has told me about) and she and her family’s hearts are an inspiration to all. The work here deserves huge support and many prayers.

Thank you Buddha’s Smile School for being such an incredible part of my journey.

Angela-Claire Cole

You can see more of Angela-Claire’s photos here | Link

Being in Rajani’s presence has a calming and encouraging effect. She is such a loving, golden-hearted, hard working and sacrificing woman. She takes children who have no hope, and gives them her heart and teaches them.

Often the children who Rajan receives into her classroom can only sit blank-faced at first, because they cannot read their lessons. Through encouragement, patience and little goodies tucked into their tiny hands as rewards, before long she has her classroom full of children who can read at a level two grades higher than they did upon entering her school earlier in the year. Many of these children are taught at home that begging on the street provides a better opportunity for them than learning in a classroom, but Rajani strongly believes she has an obligation to change that way of thinking. ‘We don’t know which child will be a diamond in the future; but it is our responsibility to send them to school to find out.’

I saw firsthand how Amistad’s donors make a difference for these children. Amistad provides the money for four auto-rickshaws to bring children from their slums to her school five days a week. It provides salaries for seven teachers including Rajan herself (who pays herself only two-thirds of what she pays the others, and probably works twice as hard). Occasionally there is enough money to buy new shoes and warm sweaters. Once a week, a meal is provided for the children. Unfortunately, Rajani does not have funds to provide daily meals but nonetheless she opens so many other doors for children who have no one else to care for them.

I offered what insights I could to Rajan, but mainly encouraged her to carefully budget the small amount of funds she receives, explained to her what donors’ expectations are, and encouraged her to devote herself to the children rather than spreading herself too thin trying to reach all the children her generous heart aches to teach.

I am in Denver now practising law again. While my venue has changed to a more serene environment, my attitude toward life has also changed. I am now fully aware of how blessed I am to have benefited from education and career possibilities that most women in the world can’t even fathom.

My biggest struggle is rationalizing our nation’s material wealth compared to much of the rest of the world. It is nearly impossible for me to have dinner out, see the endless variety of stuff we sell in our malls, or flip through a glossy catalogue without being reminded of the number of children who could be educated, fed and kept from a life of prostitution with the money we so frivolously spend daily.

Special Note: Amistad especially want to thank Ann Down and the Good Works Institute, Donna Peters, Dr. Sundeep Rathore and Dr. Lawrence Chizen for their life-giving help to Rajani’s school.

Amy Symons

Today, that bare patch of land is a two level school-building (co-built by Sukhdev) with 200 small students. One just has to see the children, see their faces, to know just how important this school is for their lives. Here, they learn to count; to read; to write; mathematics; spelling, and basic life skills such as how to care for their clothing, how to respect their friends and class mates, how to give to others and what it is to be members of a community rather than outcasts. In the morning they say their prayers (in Sanskrit, English and Hindi). On Saturdays, music is played over speakers and they dance and play. Amsitad International provides enough funding so that, once a week, all of the students are fed.

But more personally, one just have to see the children pulling at Rajan Saini’s salwa kameez to show their injuries so that she can clean them, nurture them, care for them to see the impact Raj is making on the lives of these children. Their parents quite often laugh that they treat Raj like their mother. And, in many crucial sense, she is. As Raj likes to say, “They are my children, my responsibility, I must do this.”

But the situation of the school is still quite difficult. The teachers find it an uphill battle trying to convince the children and their families of the value and importance of coming to school. Once a week, on Saturdays, they visit the families of the children to check on their welfare, their health, and to try to convince the parents who have withdrawn their children of the importance of their education. Moreover, a sad story: while my husband and I were there, we were told of a small girl whose mother told Raj that the father was planning on selling her for prostitution. In response, the school teachers were extra vigilant of this small one, making sure that if the father came to take her home that they held onto her. But there is only so much they can do, they don’t have the funds to take her in and protect her permanently, and given it is heresay it’s not quite on the level to get the police involved. But these things happen. Sarnath is in Uttar Pradesh, one of the poorer states in India, the most populated state, and one where the caste system is still deeply entrenched, where dowry murder still occurs, where corruption still prolific at all levels.

But, even in such a difficult space, there is room for much inspiration. Before the sponsorship of Amistad International, Raj had to meet costs for transporting the children to the school. To meet this cost, she sold one of her most precious possessions, her gold wedding necklace (the Hindu version of a wedding ring). When we visited this time, my husband and I happened to bring her a gold-plated locket from New Zealand as a gift. Initially, she thought it was artificial gold, and accepted it graciously. However, when her teachers suggested that it glittered as though it was real, she took it off and placed it on her altar. Later that evening she approached me and asked whether it was real gold. I told her it was gold plated, and I could see the emotion building in her face. When I hugged her, she broke into tears, and spoke of the pain she had felt in having to sell her necklace. Summoning her inner resolve, she held the locket and committed to putting a photo of Mother Theresa inside and to wear it always. This one she will never sell. And I believe it to be true. Such is the inner strength and resolve of this amazing woman.

How do such things emerge in the world, from absolutely nothing but an idea, to bloom into such entities as the Buddha’s Smile School that impact on hundreds of people’s lives? They emerge from the imagination, courage and sense of inner purpose of such amazing people as Rajani Saini; of such humble, courageous, fallible people who never lose faith that this is their responsibility in life, to love and care for those around them in the ways in which they can.

Bronwyn Finnigan

I met Rajan and Sukhdev 2 year ago after a small crisis in my own life. Through my dear friend Mattia I was introduced to the family, and hardly knew them, yet, I was instantly treated like one of them, they took me into their home into their life and into their hearts. I remember Sukhdev telling me never to say thank you as it was an insult, thank you is for strangers….family needs no thank you. I recall endless stories of struggle and that the couple endured in order to be together, in order to live their dreams, and in order to help others. There’s is a marvellous tale of the potential to be generous and the ability to change the lives of others.

Sometimes when I tell the story of their lives I feel like I’m exaggerating because there is such inherent beauty in it that it sounds to good to be true and yet it is all fact.

Risking a love marriage in a part of India that still extols arranged marriage Rajan was disowned by her family and friends. Alone in the world left only only with her precious Sukhdev she never looked back and stood in the shadows of her own sorrow, but rather rejoiced in her great love and dedicated her time and energy to helping others, rather than worrying for herself. A teacher by training Rajan once a resident of the booming Calcutta upper middle class came to one of the poorest regions in the country known as Uttar Pradesh in a town called Sarnath. There she began teaching the poorest of the local children for free. What started as a simple act of generosity soon burgeoned into a life long project. Through word of mouth…something that moves faster then the speed of light in the beggar towns of India, Rajan teachings became heralded throughout the village. Shortly thereafter she was teaching children on her front lawn……and letter moved into a small flat where she began an official free school for untouchable children, while Sukhdev opened a small local restaurant to support the family.

As time has passed the school became more then a place of simple education for a few children and transformed into a house of learning for over 100 hundred needy students. A place were paucity turned into opportunity and starvation satisfied by the school’s healthy meals metamorphosed into a thirst for knowledge that Rajan continued to nurture. In living amongst Rajan and her school for over two months, I can honestly say she is the closest thing I know to a living saint. She is humble, kind, and full of life. She gives as though she has an endless receptacle of energy and yet accepts hardly anything in return. I remember how completely she would insist I buy her nothing not even simple commodities like shampoo and soup if I used them, the only thing she would readily receive would be joy. She simply gives and gives and loves.

I am sure the Buddha is smiling at her and upon her hundreds of children. I am honoured to know Rajan and her family.

Heather Mason

A fellow Buddhist student recommended I visit Rajan’s school to see real compassion and devotion to others in action.

Meeting those children and seeing the happiness and joy Rajan and her family and other teachers have managed to cultivate in these children is incredible. The students there are generally the poorest of the poor with little other options in life than begging, prostitution or extremely hard labour for pay that will barely feed them.

This school has given these children, a new hope and belief in life and in themselves.

My feeling I got from my visit was how these children had found the love and security their little bodies were crying out for, in Rajan and her family. It really is a beacon of love and hope set right in the middle of one of the poorest areas in India.

I therefore believe Rajan is a modern day Mother Teresa of Uttar Pradesh and an example to us all.

Jake Fisher
England

Mattia Silvani

My name is Mattia and I have recently spent time teaching Sanskrit at Buddha’s Smile School. Despite my broken Hindi, the small students actually listened to the lessons with interest. The children memorized Sanskrit verses and made an effort to learn the first steps in the language.

Rajan is providing a rare opportunity for these children, to acquire an education that their background would normally not afford them.

At the time when I was teaching, the facilities were limited. I used to teach Sanskrit to about fourteen children, but in the classes there were at least another ten, since they had no other place to stay during pauses. To my surprise, even some of the children who were sitting there in ’stand-by’ mode, had been attentive enough to memorize a few verses. They were also quite eager to repeat them aloud.

Sanskrit and Hindi are quite close, and the students had no great difficulty in picking up a very precise pronunciation. Of all the activities, they seemed to enjoy memorization and chanting, and Rajan included some of the salutations to Ganesa (the god that removes obstacles) to their morning prayer.

Knowing some Sanskrit opens up an immense storehouse of traditional knowledge, which is often far from the reach of even many Indians. More immediately, chanting the verses puts the children, and whomsoever can hear their enthusiastic renditions, in touch with a sense of very enjoyable, cheerful sacredness. I often wondered who else will have a chance to hear these Sanskrit verses: probably their parents and relatives will be amused to hear their small kids bring home what usually only trained professional priests can.

I am not sure as to whether any of the children will go much further with the Sanskrit, but who knows? Anyhow, they seem to enjoy it. This rich language has been one of the favoured idioms of culture in India for millennia: they should access and carry some Sanskrit to their lives, if they so wish.

Mattia Salvini
Ph.D.candidate and Part Time Lecturer
Dept. Of Study of Religions
SOAS University of London

Sukhdev was a pure and honest man, but his family’s religious background differed slightly from Rajan’s, so both sets of parents ardently forbade the relationship. Nonetheless, Rajan chose her true love for Sukhdev over the economic and social pressures inflicted upon her by her family.

After completing her B.A. in Education and English from Calcutta University in 1993, she and Sukhdev married and moved to Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. Rajan immediately got a job teaching at a prestigious public school in Varanasi. But after her teaching day ended she would return to their small flat in Ashapur, the poorest and most troubled part of Varanasi. There Rajan would open up her front yard to the nearby beggars’ children, who were not attending school, and teach them reading, writing, and mathematics.

Thanks to donors like Amistad International, Rajan has been able to increase the size of her free school for underprivileged children. Two hundred children are now receiving their education in a warm, loving, and nurturing environment. Rajan is also able to provide snacks and occasional meals for the hungry children. Thanks to Amistad some of the students even have uniforms so that they do not have to attend school in rags and bare feet, giving them pride in themselves and their education.

The students’ parents are rickshaw drivers, sweepers, cow dung collectors, or weavers who are paid well below the minimum daily requirement to live and survive. Many children still beg at the brutal command of their desperate parents, who threaten to beat and even kill them if they do not return with money for dinner.

Many students have come to school with horror stories of dead relatives, brothers, sisters, mothers, who either fell sick from hunger and disease or simply died from cold in the winter or from heat in the sweltering summers. The poorest children have learned to catch rats and snakes and cook them in a fire without even spices or other flavouring, just so that they do not die of starvation.

Vanessa Turner