Dear Popples, Love Letters From An Unlikely Mother

“It is the job of stories to exemplify and exaggerate goodness. Goodness is not sticky when it is mundane.... If we want a society of goodness, kindness, compassion, courage and excellence we must tell stories of extraordinary goodness, compassion and excellence. And the extraordinarily good, kind, compassionate and courageous is called a hero”

This is what this book “Dear Popples. Love Letters From An Unlikely Mother” by Anouradha Bakshi is all about. It is about compassion, goodness, kindness, courage, extraordinary courage and much more. It is about love, about being drawn towards someone, living lives and most importantly it is about truth.

Simple at best, the book is an easy read and can be read at a stretch of between books or even after years. “Read it straight as you turn the page or read it as per the index. The story will emerge. And it will be the way you wanted it to emerge. In life we don’t often have that privilege” says Anouradha right at the beginning.

The book is a wonderful collection of letters that Anouradha writes to Popples in a bid to explain how he came into her life, how he changed her life and how & why she let him go from her life. Before you make any more assumptions, let me reveal that Popples is a little boy who Anouradha first saw when he shy of being one year old. Unfavorable circumstances and terrible fate landed little Popples in a pot of boiling curry.

“The stage was finally set; all the props and protagonists in place;

the drunken parents, the tiny room with hardly any space and no option

but to keep the stove next to the bed.

It must have been a good day at work as there was a bottle

and also some fish to turn into a spicy treat.

As the fish bubbled happily in the pan, the boy slept soundly

and the inebriated mom stepped out.

The child woke up and not finding his mom tried to get up

and landed in the fish curry pan.”

The doctors at Safdarjung Hospital gave burned, bruised and completely swathed Popples ‘Nil’ chances of survival. From here on, we can get a gist of the story. Anouradha takes in the boy, helps nurse him back to health, gives him an opportunity to have a better life, sends him to a good school, has help pouring in from all quarters and across the world in cash and kind and so on and so forth. Simple!

However, it is not so simple afterall! This is a beautiful story of little Popples who loses everything and yet gains so much. This is the story of Anouradha whose maternal instincts awakes and yet who lets go of Popples because she wants better than the best for him. 

This is the story of Anouradha’s past, about her grandparents & her parents. This is the story of misery, triumph, heartache, longing, love, innocence, maternal instincts and above all of faith, hope, good will and HEROS. This is also the story of ‘Project Why’, an organisation which works with disadvantaged children and women in New Delhi. It reaches out to over 600 children and runs early education programs, prep classes, Primary and Secondary after school support programs, day cares and life skills program for children with disabilities. You can visit www.projectwhy.org to know more.

  

Read “Dear Popples” if you love emotions; read it if you believe in unconditional love and read it simply because you love reading.

Of the many things I took away from this book is the part where Anouradha shares Richard Needham’s quote “Strong people make as many mistakes as weak people. The difference is that strong people admit their mistakes, laugh at them and learn from them. That is how you become strong.” However not all of us are strong and Anouradha goes on to say “My experience of life had shown me something else in this ballet of mistakes and forgiveness, and that is the necessity of moving on and not looking back because the entire merit of forgiving comes to naught if the person is constantly reminded of his or her omission or asked to change the past, something that can never be done as time only moves in one direction. If you forgive, then you must be willing to start anew. That is when you have truly forgiven with your heart.”

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