It has been hell for APAAR. What a start of 2025 ! Being evicted Jan 2 night ( NIGHT !) with such humiliation when we had asked for three more days at PIMS. The deceit ! The main PIMS administrator "helping" us empty our main hall into the female ward as they needed to begin construction. We thanking them and arranging our temporary workplaces in the hall leading to the female ward. Jan 5, Sunday was our planned move out date communicated to them. JUST six weeks after being told to move mind you, by the complete Capitalist Corporate takeover of Punjab Institute of Medical Sciences. 

The female ward we move our belongings to is empty for at least 3 years next door to us. Still empty I bet. An FIR APAAR lodged for destruction of property and defamation plus mental anguish to PIDD and staff. This FIR could be lodged three days later only AFTER visiting offices of the DSSO and DC. Imagine - we are retrieving our property from PIMS dumping ground PLUS stri=uglling to register a police case. 

Our three signboards still missing. Missingwith PIMS destruction : APAAR's fans, APAAR doors (from cubicles we built), our air conditioning unit. APAAR benches.

But really - such an upstream fight our war for social justice is. This social fabric of society is actively against warriors like APAAR. Society antagonistic to civil society.

 We had identified a building to house APAAR - the large empty halls of Virsa Vihar which I have seen for years and years- vacant. There is a spacious garden space there- to resume our gardening. The Deputy Commissioner, Jalandhar is chairman. He refuses to give us one of those empty halls. He lectures me on NGOs' having funds for their own buildings. Thanks. I lecture back that no NGO can function without government collaboration and neither he nor his predecessors have helped APAAR improve the landscape for PIDD in Jalandhar district despite our going all the way to Chandigarh for help. APAAR's vision lies in shambles because of multiple DCs' and SMOs' being actively non-cooperative. 

I visit two private schools to get access to their grounds while APAAR is housed in a tiny apartment on the first floor of my house. MGN School and Guru Nanak Foundation School. The principals are in meetings. Blah blah. The receptionist will call me when the principal is free. Blah .I call two days later. They will call me they blah blah againI have handed my cards both places six weeks ago. No one has called. 

They have no time for APAAR. School principals ! Shallowness is the trend. 

The zeitgist is " to hell with disability". 

As that Vietanmese Buddhist monk said :

"  We are here to disabuse ourselves of the illusion of our separateness." Watch out you well people. No one is able life-long. 

Meanwhile , APAAR resumes its monthly socials with families of PIDD next week with the handful of sane neurotypical people in this crass ecosystem. #1On the agenda: communication apps for the autistic,

#2 a discussion on sharing respite as a community of families who society has fully shunned.

PS   The photo accompanying this blogpost has a poem in Punjabi by Avtar Singh Pash which I translate here:

The looting of hard earned money is not the most dangerous

beatings by the police are not the most dangerous

the fist of treachery and greed is not the most dangerous

the most dangerous is 

being filled with a corpse's peace while alive

not feeling the pain of injustice, putting up with anything

just going to work, returning from work

the most dangerous is the dying of our dreams.