“Chotti Si Asha” was started as an experiment about a year back…there were no big plans or agendas. The motivation was very simple - a desire to connect with this new city (Chandigarh) that I had come to live and to feel alive. The beginning was a simple visit to the market plaza of Chandigarh with an intention to connect with some children. As they say - you just have to have strong intentions everything else follows…that is exactly what happened. I went to the plaza and met two children who were polishing shoes and were begging at the same time. And I felt this urge to connect with them. So I sat along with them and chatted…we had lunch together and they told me a lot of things (most of it was a lie that I later found it) about themselves, gave me fake names and expressed a desire to learn to write. I asked them if they would like to meet me everyday so we can chat and learn new things from each other…they seemed to have liked the idea and so we set up a time for our next meeting.

The next day, I was there at the plaza but there was no sign of my new friends…obviously, they didn’t trust that I would come the next day. And so my search started…I started looking for them in the plaza and found them…we sat together with people staring at me and wondering what was I up to…I handed them a copy and a pencil. It seems that they were holding these things for the first time and the sheer joy of holding a pencil in their hand could be seen in their eyes, smile and expression.

So the experiment started evolving...for almost one whole month, I had to search for the kids in the plaza before we could start our daily activity that included drawing, playing, learning to write and story telling etc…slowly, our relationship grew and they started trusting that I would show up everyday. So we decided on a place in the rose garden and the kids started showing up on time. With time more people joined our group…most of the adults that joined the group were relatives of these young children who were begging/polishing shoes in the plaza. It was surprising to see the child-like characteristics of these elders boys…they would enjoy coloring as much as the kids, they would love to listen to fairy tales and would love to browse through story books with pictures, they would love to play games that we used to play at the age of 5 or 6…their understanding/reactions about a lot of things was very child-like. The only thing that they understood well was that they had to earn enough by the end of the day so as to feed their family and the best way to earn is through the younger kids in the group because they could beg.

I learnt a lot of things about them and their life. And tried (am still trying) not to be judgmental while working with them … their life is very very different from the life that I lead and so my judgments cannot be applied on them. It is a journey for me as well as these children/adults.

Some of the boys started learning stitching while the others started doing other craft work. We decided to put up an exhibition of the stuff that these kids made and that is when we realized that we needed a name. We chose – “chotti si asha”.

You can read more about our journey and our experiences so far on my blog - http://everydaytidbits.blogspot.com/

Follow this blog for our journey ahead :-)