Enchanted by elephants

Those who know me know how much I love pachyderms. There’s something about these gentle giants that takes my breath away.

It is no surprise that my visit to the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka will remain one of my most memorable travel experiences. The orphanage houses and cares for over 80 wild elephants that are orphaned or found abandoned. We stopped at Kegalle en route Kandy from Colombo on an overcast day.

After having spent the morning in the vast orphanage, the entire herd walks across to the Oya River to bathe. I remember having butterflies in my stomach because I could actually feel slight tremors as the herd walked along the small lane off the highway into the river. It is a sight to behold and reminds you how small and helpless human beings are in front of nature!

There are a number of restaurants that dot the lane leading upto the river. We dined at a restaurant offered panoramic views of the river and allowed guests to get up close and personal with the bathing elephants. 

A memorable day, which reinforced my belief that we humans take ourselves too seriously, while being quite minuscule in the larger scheme of things. Literally :) 

DIY Madness

It is wonderful what some free time, coloured paper, inspiration (mostly from Pinterest) and some imagination can do! What started off as an effort to engage my daughter soon became an obsession.

As an infant, I always thought Baby A got bored of simply staring at the ceiling and other random objects in the room. So I made her a cradle mobile out of chart paper, with huge shapes, contrasting colours and some glitter. Oh boy! She loved it. 

Egged on by her reactions, I made her the dragon (which I picked up from a felt toy design by Dawn Treacher on Flickr) and hung it by the window. She would watch it while daddy dearest played her Puff the magic dragon…

When she began focusing a bit more and recognizing bright objects, I made a series of sunlight catchers. The one on the left is made out of wax paper and crayons. Again an idea that I picked off Pinterest, I threw multi coloured shavings of wax crayon in between two layers of wax paper and heated it gently with an iron. Some brilliant shapes emerged and I cut them to shape and gave it a chart paper outline.

Caution: The wax tends to become brittle on ageing. You can see this on the top left corner of the wax paper. So ensure you do not hold this near or directly above a baby. This is best appreciated from a distance.

 I would have liked to name the one on the right something Notre-dame ish,  but I call it the "Brahmastra", which is the deadliest weapon according to ancient Sanskrit scriptures. This worked like magic on Baby A and hence the name. 

The disc is a paper plate with shapes cut out of it and filled with glass paper. We would just lie on the bed, looking at the sunlight streaming through it for hours together. Also, when she grew older, she loved the rustle of the paper and was a great source of entertainment.

The octopus and starfish below are made of felt, stuffed with polyfill. Pretty run of the mill. I used googly eyes for the starfish and hand embroidered the rest. I hand stitched the felt inside out as well. I got a little lazy with the octopus and just stitched it from the outside, used foam for the eyes and mouth of the octopus.

I converted a carton of raisins into the pink handheld puppet. The tongue is made of felt and has space to slip in a finger and wiggle the tongue around. The eyes could have been much better, I botched it up. The hair of the puppet is made out of quilling paper, loosely wound.

Caution: If you do end up making this puppet, ensure you get a picture before you little one can lay hands on it. In a matter of seconds, it will look nothing like the original.

Have you done anything of this sort before? If so, please let me know. You plan to do something like this soon? Keep me posted on how things turn out! Bouquets and brickbats are welcome. 

C is to Conquer

I was not sure what I would even tell her. I had debated hell of a lot about this call. Would she be tired of answering endless such calls? Would she find it intrusive? But how could I not call? You know what made it all the more difficult? It was her birthday that day… I never miss her birthday; it is a day after my mom’s.

I picked up some courage and called her with a lump in my throat and a stomach in knots. There I was, delivering a condolence message, on her birthday, on the passing of her precious little boy, all of 3 years old, who fought valiantly against high grade glioma, a rare and aggressive brain tumour.

Being a parent is the only way you will know how much love and sacrifice you are capable of. It will stun you to discover how large hearted you can be. They say, along with the baby, parents are born as well. Despite being a parent, I cannot even imagine what they must have gone through during the course of the treatment. Awareness has become such a loosely used word - the scale of the misconception about paediatric cancer is appalling and scary. Sadly, paediatric cancer is still unspoken about at a public level in India and support groups are virtually nonexistent.

Above all, children battling this monster and their families need constant encouragement, support and hope. However, not everybody can provide emotional support to these families, simply because one cannot fathom what they go through, without actually having gone through it. But what we can all do is connect people in need with other parents who will be able to help. A small step in this regard is the presence of two closed groups for Parents of Indian kids with cancers: Pediatric Leukemia and Lymphoma India & Pediatric Brain Tumor India (I picked this up from my friend’s FB timeline)

Apparently, two of the largest children's cancer NGO's in India raise less than 3 crores per year. So the next time you feel philanthropic, please do consider donating to institutions / NGOs towards care and treatment for paediatric cancer. In cash, in kind, volunteer… Really, anything at all. I do not want to advocate any particular institution; a simple google search will help you decide!

A million other questions are teeming in my head. A shout out to my journalist friends here. Could you help with awareness? What after awareness? We all know awareness means visibility, and with visibility comes a greater hope of funding. But who is it who allocates funds? What are the various avenues of gathering funds? What about research facilities? Do we have any for paediatric cancer already? What is the status of these institutions? I read, that in some parts of the country, gender discrimination exists even in a condition as terrible as this. Are nurses equipped to deal with children? Do their courses support and recognize the fact that children need special care and attention? Or are there any trainers who can help upskill hospital staff?

If you have noticed, I have titled this post C is to Conquer and not C is for Cancer for a reason – Hope.

My earnest appeal to the few people who read my blog – should you come across a suitable opportunity or forum to share/ provide any form of support related to this, please do so without batting an eyelid. Your efforts will lead to may just lead to saving tender little lives someday.