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Rupayan and Bow Bazar Swimming Club
Brian Flanagan • 10 September 2010
Return to Rupayan - Introducing the boys to their sponsors
Setting up the sponsorship program with Mr. Tapan Banerjee from the Rupayan Home was something I wanted to do from the first time I met the children in 2008. The home caters for boys with similar backgrounds to those mentioned in the previous section.
Last year when the Castleknock Community College students came to Kolkata we took all 14 boys away for their first ever holiday, a weekend in the Sunderban region of West Bengal. It proved as described in last year’s newsletter to be a great success and several of the students and their families are now sponsors.
With Tapan translating for me, I sat each child down individually and told him he had someone far away in Ireland who cared about him and wanted to help with his education. I gave them a picture of their sponsor and their name(s). Bemused and curious, each boy waited his turn to learn of his new-found friend in Ireland. Great excitement ensued afterwards with the boys wanting to know about their sponsors: “Who is my Uncle?...Who is my Auntie?”
Having been rejected and neglected by their own parents it was wonderful to see their emotions as they began to understand someone cared for them, albeit from a distance. For Shane and me it was a real privilege and those special moments will never be forgotten. It was a true case of our motto being put into practice, “If you can’t be there, be kind”.
We took the boys for a day’s outing to a park called Monobitan where they could run and play and enjoy the facilities: swings, seesaws, paddle boats, bicycles etc. All this including breakfast and lunch made for a great day out in a beautiful rural setting away from the noise and pollution of the city. Football and chasing in 40 degrees of heat left us all tired but happy at the day’s end. The boys still had enough energy to hug us to death as we said our goodbyes. Giving them back a little of their childhood of which they had been deprived was truly priceless.
Bowbazar Swimming Club “Pay back time”
Our support for Bowbazar Swimming Club over the past two years has been targeted in assisting boys and girls who come from poor families to pay for swimming lessons and provide transport costs and nutrition. We thought it would be a good idea for the children from SEED, another group we support, to learn how to swim as organised a morning session for them. We struck up a deal with the club manager, Shankar, to provide lessons for this year. Getting into the murky water in the shallow end of this enormous “pond” and almost doing the splits on the slimy bottom of the pool made me question whether this was a good idea for the kids or not?
The pool is located in College Square and was originally built in the early 1900s by the British as a reservoir to supply water to the fire services. Several clubs now use the facilities and although not the most hygienic place I have swam in, it serves its purpose and gives pleasure and sport to many. Concern for the children from SEED was really unfounded as they have heightened immune systems from growing up on the streets of Kolkata and many of them were good little swimmers, having learned to swim in the ghats along the river Hooghly. The ghats are used to cremate the deceased. Afterwards the remains are taken down the steps to the river and left to float away to start the next life…
The Hooghly is a tributary of the sacred river Ganges and is synonymous with Kolkata and despite the fact that much untreated “fluids” and “solids” for that matter enter into its murky depths; many thousands bathe, swim and wash and make offerings each morning and evening. They are watched by many who cross the massive Howrah Bridge which carries over 150,000 vehicles each day and almost the whole population of Ireland, as it is estimated an average of 4,000,000 pedestrians use it on a daily basis!
We left our little swimmers enjoying a packed lunch provided by Bowbazar Swimming Club. Their smiles paid us back for very little effort and the swimming lessons continue in our absence.
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The saying “ absence makes the heart grow fonder ” has been uppermost in my mind over the past months. My regular Zoom or WhatsApp calls with the children in Kolkata are a help but almost two years have passed since being with them in person. I am amused by the deeper voices of some of the children as they enter their teenage years. The voices and the bodies change and a request for six new bunk beds was a reminder of how much the boys are growing. A very generous donation from a local person came just at the right time to cover the costs.
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(IRL) CLG trading as "Bekind Ireland" is an Irish company limited by guarantee (Company Number: 448441) and Irish registered charity (Registered Charity Number: 20067960), with its offices at 33 Woodpark, Castleknock, Dublin D15KP6R, Ireland.