My great dream of spending a pleasant few minutes posting shattered a few minutes ago. But, post I will, though admittedly it isn't going to be a pleasant one.

As a non-profit working with children, one of the areas we work in is a slum area in Delhi. We run a very tiny preschool program for a group of 50 kids. After a year of working, we evaluated the progess of the kids, and were so excited to find the kids show tremendous improvement in their development milestones. And, as with all kids, it is such a pleasure to watch them grow. The parents love the program. Last week, I conducted a mock "exam " for the kids, where they had to recite nursery rhymes and alphabets for me. The idea was just to see if they had the confidence to speak up and also of course, how much they learned. We invited parents too, so that they could see their child's progress. The event was a big success from all perspectives - the mothers were in tears to see their kids speak in English - Johnny, Johnny was every kid's favorite poem. And I was amused by the howlers - I asked one kid what his name was, and when he responded correctly, I asked him his mother's name. He gave me almost a pitying look and said "Mummy", in a tone that implied, "Which planet do you live on?". Another kid said "Twinkle twinkle little star, eating sugar, yes papa". Kids are awesome.

Parents did their best to convince us to keep the kids with us, instead of enrolling them in the local goverment school. Of course, since our objective is to send the kids to school, we keep repeating that our "school" is just a preparatory one. Admissions began in the school this week, and tomorrow we were scheduled to take the first group of kids for admission. Parents were still unconvinced - they keep relating stories of how teachers don't teach, and that the kids would forget all that they had learned in the past year etc etc.

And then into this happy bubble of community politics, today happened. Our Program Manager called to tell me that at the local school, a teacher beat up a child so badly that she died. That sounds inhuman in itself, but the real story is that the child was sick, didn't do her homework, and the teacher made her bend forward, placed a load of bricks on her back, and kept hitting her, till she had a brain haemorrhage.

Of course, this isn't the first time this has happened in an Indian school. But, what shocks me is that this is the capital city, and look at how underdeveloped we are. What also shocks me is the attitude of the lower middle class, vis-a-vis the slumdwellers. Previously when I visited the school a few months ago, the principal said "I don't know why you waste your time - these people cannot be improved". Of course I told him I didn't share his opinion, but he just laughed indulgently, suggesting I clearly had miles to go before I grow up. At that time it had struck me pretty hard that our small preschool program is not going to be enough. When they are with us, the kids live in this happy, secure bubble. The school is where they get their first taste of the real world. And, then making a vague mental resolve that sometime in the future, we needed to work on sensitizing the schools in the area, the interests of the other 200,000 kids I work for, took precedence over these 50 kids.

The area is in a riot situation, and other than the direct implications of this on the girl and her family, and the school, our parents have simply refused to admit their kids in school, now. More importantly, what a waste of life.