Operation NPC (A Report by Adhiraj): "Late on Monday evening (June 2nd), I decided to take a "sunset drive" to DLF. We'd been making frequent trips to Nathupur to sort out the school building, and I wanted to see if we could complete razing the old structure. With that done on Monday evening, I blocked off Tuesday morning for erecting the tent. There was a little apprehension in my mind about whether we would get it right. Come Tuesday, and I loaded the tent on to my car, and along with Abhishek, set off for Nathupur Pahari.

Within moments of our arrival there, the area was abuzz with the excitement of activity. Sitaram and two of his friends came across to help us. A couple of ladies walked past smiling, yelling bits of advice, offering tea and water. The children were of course most excited. While we were cleaning the cover area and embanking the boundary, Srinjoy came running up, offering his services. His first task was to supply us with cold water.

The temperature that day must have touched 45 degrees. The sun was unforgiving. With dust pervading the atmosphere, we were continuously parched. At the same time, there was a mugginess in the air that made us perspire like frozen beer mugs. We had to set up fast otherwise there would be a few very ill people.

By getting the kids to handle the sweeping and embankment work, with Sita Ram and his team, Abhishek and I managed to move the heavy stones out of the way and into place, and prepare the infrastructure for the tent. While that was the most labour intensive work, it took all of thirty minutes. Once that was completed, we mounted the tent on the poles and got around to positioning it and tying it for optimum stability and height. Once the tent was mounted, we had a little shade that provided some respite from the malicious heat. We used innovative methods to tie the tent to its poles and lodging the tent pegs and ropes was pretty straightforward. I taught some of the children how to operate some of the flaps and laces on the tent, while Abhishek treated the entire set-up team to ice cream. He even got me to eat one of those sticky things albeit kicking and screaming.

Once the tent was up and secure, we got the kids around to laying the floor mats, dusting them before they were placed inside. This was an interesting activity, because Alauddin and his group of older boys would not let either us or the girls dust. They figured that strength was required to dust well, so they would dust the sheets and pass them on to the girls who would lay them inside. Kanchan, a little girl with earrings and a cute dress, was enjoying the atmosphere. Every time a sheet was laid, she would roll on it to test it for comfort, while singing to herself and smiling at everyone. At one point, one of the older girls lost her patience with Kanchan's revelry and clipped her on the ear. There was a moment of discomfort while Kanchan was crying and I firmly explained to the group not to resort to corporal punishment, especially on those younger and smaller. In a moment, all was well again, the exercise was complete.

The tent looked nice from within and without, with a motley carpet and padded sides. The boys were trying to figure out how to put up the Ritinjali board on the bamboo pole, and while I offered them a few ideas, I left them to figure it out. After a little wire bending and knot tying, they managed to put it up on the pole. We cleaned up the area and left. I was looking forward to turning on the air conditioner in the car for a cool drive back to the office. Our heads were hot, and our brains were no less than addled. I realized that a drastic change in temperature would only increase the risk of sickness, so we drove back, sans air conditioning, our faces grimy, our bodies wet with sweat (perspiration is too clean a word), yearning for litres of cold water.

" Ritinjali begins work at Kusumpur Pahari Centre (KPC): After sorting out books for the Kusumpur Pahari Centre and for the Ritinjali office library Adhiraj, Abhishek and Neera headed to KPC on June 6th, 2003. The place where Ritinjali had got a small building constructed happened to be a dilapidated platform on which the local community used to host cultural functions (e.g. Ram Lila). The site was selected by Mr. Arun Kapur, and designed by him too, after soliciting community opinions for our proposed activities and owing to its strategic central positioning. There used to be a water storage tank beneath the platform, which went into disuse overtime as the boring wells dried up. The youth had built up a gym therein and would enter into that through a hole, large enough for one to physically slip into it.

Nevertheless, we were also mentally prepared for some inconvenience to the local residents for a while and an ensuing irritation as some of them might find it difficult to adjust with the new developments.

On way we were told that Savitri (a local resident and a strong supporter for Ritinjali's proposed work in the area) and other women had become slightly uncomfortable, the previous day, after not receiving keys of our building for hosting a function there.

As we reached there, we were delighted to see a beautiful building standing on an earlier edifice that had been nothing more than a poorly maintained platform. We went inside and looked at the construction and space, which was about 15 feet by 15 feet. We found it quite airy, full of light, exquisitely designed and just the appropriate structure for running Ritinjali's activities.