I was visiting Ahmedabad last week, doing a small project for an NGO. It was my first proper visit to the city. A friend had told me that I must visit Muskaan. I didn’t know what Muskaan was and what to expect there but, being my first visit, I wanted to see all the good places in the city so I decided to follow the recommendation.

If you are visiting Ahmedabad for the first time, especially if you are from Mumbai, the thing about the city that impresses you the most is the infrastructure. The city is clean, has wide roads with separate lanes for buses, well maintained buildings, and every residential area has a park. But as you venture through the city, you can’t help but notice certain areas which have been left untouched by the all round development which the state government time and again boasts of. It seems as if these areas have been forgotten intentionally. One such area is Juhapura; it doesn’t have good roads or parks, is full of shanties, and looks as if it is a completely different city from Ahmedabad. It is adjacent to another area known as Vejalpur, where again you can see development in its full flourish. Why these two areas are in such contrast is a matter to be debated in another article.

One evening I was in the area adjoining Juhapura and Vejalpur, and decided to visit MUSKAAN. Developed by an NGO named SPRAT (Society for Promoting Rationality), Muskaan, a science and adventure park was inaugurated in 2006. The park is maintained by SPRAT and is free for everyone. Located on a wasteland in one of the most underdeveloped areas of Ahmedabad, the park is like a shower on an evening in the month of June.

The moment I entered Muskaan it felt like I was inside a time machine, and I was being propelled back in time to my childhood. All the toys and joyrides in the park got me excited and I remembered when I was a kid and used to visit the Children’s park in my hometown with my parents. These joyrides were all exactly the same but they were made of junk. Old vehicle rubber tyres have become seats for a see saw, a huge unused concrete sewer pipe became the base of a slide and a tunnel, while bamboos and steel cables became swinging bridges.

The entrance of the park has a scale printed on a flex sheet hanging from the wall. The scale is divided into three colors, yellow, red and blue. Like the scale the whole park is divided into three zones, yellow, red and blue. When a kid comes into the park, he stands by the scale and depending on his height, a playing zone is allocated to him. So, if a small kid comes in she goes to the yellow zone, while a tall kid goes to the blue zone. All the rides in the park have been carefully and scientifically designed. There’s a wall which has been constructed for rock climbing, and also swings and merry go rounds which exhibit the laws of physics. It also has an auditorium with a seating capacity of 200 people. Exhibitions and movie shows are organized in the auditorium.

The best thing about the park however is the smiling faces of the kids. They are all around us, running, laughing and playing. We organized an impromptu sports event in which the kids participated with zeal. There was not a single ride empty. The kids come from the adjoining areas and most of them belong to families who are daily wage earners. They spend most of their times playing in the park after they return from school. The staff in the park takes care of them. The kids play, share and develop a bonding amongst them. These kids were mostly very small, and some of them were not yet born when the communal riots had destroyed the peace of the city. Some of them were born in the refugee camps after the 2002 riots. Now they are moving on, learning, playing, looking forward to make a better society, to be empowered and rational so that no one can beguile them again in the name of religion.

When my friend had suggested that I visit Muskaan, I wasn’t aware that I would be visiting my childhood and the future, both at the same time. Muskaan, in itself, has the promise that no kid will lose his childhood and also the promise of constructing a better society for everyone’s better future.