It was one of those days that seemed to be extremely busy at the ward…and extremely dull for us. Very few kids were ready for our program when we arrived. Manjari and I went about talking to the staff, parents and children, trying to gather them for some activities and lessons. We did manage to gather about twenty children, many of whom were newly admitted.

Manjari found Naga (name changed), who was on a drip and was generally quite down. The moment he saw her, he asked if we had brought the trunk of books we normally carry for them to read. He wanted her to bring a book for him at his bedside, which we did after taking special permission.

A little after our activities started (on a different floor), we found Naga hobbling up with his entire IV apparatus stuck on. He sat on a bench a little distance away with his grandmother, and insisted on doing some math. He pulled out his notebook and a pencil, and asked us to give him a bunch of problems to solve.

After recovering from our initial surprise, we gave him some sums to do and some word-building exercises, which he finished very quickly. Every time we looked up, we found him stretching out his free hand, holding his notebook out to us, saying “Aunty, aunty, I’ve finished this. Give me some more.”

His enthusiasm was effusive and made us all smile. Looking at his interaction with us, his grandmother was amused and began participating actively in our program.