Sunil Dutt at the awards ceremony of the Better Calcutta Contest; one of the shows put up on the occasion. Pictures by Pradip Sanyal

we live in an age of uncertainty; an age when tomorrow may never come; an age when you may be the chief minister today and the chief minister?s husband tomorrow; an age when you may be big brother?s apple of the eye today and thorn in the flesh tomorrow.

So, enjoy it as long as it lasts; tell people about it: this column is three today! That, in these uncertain times, you will agree, is a long time ? twice as long as a Pakistani cricket captain lasts and three times as long as an Uttar Pradesh chief minister!

I?ve enjoyed these three years, playing with words and sharing my point of view, as I focus on the positives of the city and the people who make it happen. It?s got me to read a lot; research; search; seek; find; knock; and what has been most rewarding are the number of doors that have opened and the people I have met. People who have made me feel so small; so ordinary; so humbled.

Why go far ? take last week, when I met a father who has been through the most Rocky of times with his son Sanjay, but who still has the deepest faith and confidence in the next generation. He asked the parents present at the Awards ceremony of the Better Calcutta Contest to be patient and understanding with their children and encourage them to live for others. At the event organised by the ICC Calcutta Foundation, I began introducing him as the honourable minister for sports and youth affairs, but ended up drifting from my script, and crowning him a ?true son of Mother India?. The children being honoured that afternoon for writing and acting their social messages, with solutions for the city we have borrowed from them, know him as ?Munna Bhai?s father?. We know him as the man who saved the great Nargis from a fire during the shooting of Mother India and went on to become the only actor to marry a co-star who played his on-screen mother. In this age of communal uncertainty, we know him as a messiah of peace in Mera Gaon Mera Desh. His family knew him as Balraj Dutt, a 12-year-old in Sialkot, now in Pakistan, who secretively jumped onto his uncle?s fastest horse and threw caution to the wind. He knew as much about riding as Munna Bhai knew about the MBBS, so he was thrown off and badly bruised; but he smiled, got up, and promised himself to keep trying. I know him as the father of a sunken-eyed heartthrob I met in Lucknow recently, who admitted to be loved by his dad in spite of slipping out of his dying mother?s hospital room for yet another ?fix?. The world knows this simple soul and great man as Sunil Dutt!

The world knows the man who followed him onto the stage after many schools were recognised for their meaningful long-term social service projects, as one of the most aggressive captains. His team mates know him as Dada. The children present at the event made possible by the Indian Chamber of Commerce, Eveready, Art and Heritage Foundation and The Telegraph, got to know him as an excitable young man who could still play ball. Ever so sportingly, he did a Sobers-Shastri on my colleague Stanley Paul, by smashing six tennis ball sixes into the Science City auditorium. While Stanley, like Nash and Tilak Raj did after they were mauled for 36 in an over, has followed in the hapless bowlers? footsteps and gone on long leave, the children are still reeling. The students who caught the autographed balls, are reportedly still as dazed as the captain was when Laxman and Dravid beat Australia at Eden Gardens. The Best Cheering Team, Chowringhee High School, is reportedly using its boundless energy to raise funds for the tsunami cause, with its prize ? the autographed bat that the skip used to hit Stanley?s underarm longhops. Spin bowlers around the world have been hit out of the ground often enough to know him; they know him as Sourav Ganguly!

Little Vinod knows him as the man who interrupted his stellar performance in the lead role in Parivarikee?s play that afternoon; but he also knows him as the emotional star who admitted that it was probably the ?warmest? reception he had ever received. That was when he walked into the event after 37 schools had received their statuettes, certificates and cheques to encourage them to keep touching lives. The capacity crowd broke out into a standing ovation for a sportsman who doesn?t hesitate to lose his shirt on the cricket field. Little Vinod didn?t lose his. Unruffled, he kept rattling off his lines through the applause, like a jatra veteran, three feet high.

Who has given this pocket dynamite his formula of self-confidence to get on with the show ? and with life? Who has nurtured this pavement- dweller who counts the stars in the sky every night only because they stare him in the face? We know them as the builders of Parivarikee, a special school. We know them as a deeply committed group of ladies, with Doordarshan news correspondent Sushmita Gupta and housewife Riju Chamaria as secretary and assistant secretary. Vinod?s mother, a domestic help who bounces from one house to another like a ping-pong ball, knows them as generous souls who are keeping her son off the streets and getting him up to Class IV.

Years ago, that?s what they did with Tapan Haldar, now an assistant to the director on the popular TV serial, Aastha, produced by Shishir Gupta, Sushmita?s husband. Years ago, that?s what they did with Ishwar Sardar, now an artist and sculptor and Madan, now a homeopathic doctor. Years ago, that?s what they did with Swapan, now a hardworking taxi-driver, whose gurudakshina to the late Sushila Singhi, the founder of the three-storeyed cr?che and school, was when he saw her stranded on a crowded street and gave her a lift home.

While many schools in the city are worried about the drop in numbers due to the influx of new-age institutions in the city, Parivarikee has the same problem for a very different reason: the new Lake Gardens flyover! Their strength has plummeted from 750 to 550 because hundreds of pavement and bustee-dwellers have had to move.

Moving ever so gracefully on the stage after Vinod and Saurav stole our hearts, were the girls of Bikash Bharati Open School in Baranagore. Many of them are the daughters of commercial sex workers in congested Lebubagan, a workplace even older than Sonagachhi. All of them are in the ?children at risk? category, who need to be educated, motivated and distracted ? the latter during the evenings when their mothers have to work to make a living. All the talented dancers I met backstage seemed determined to look ahead with confidence, not back in anger. They love their mums and respect them; but they want to be achievers ? teachers, models, sales girls, office assistants.

We know the NGO that is helping to reduce the number of ?children at risk? in the city as Bikash Bharati Welfare Society. We know it as a 40-year-old NGO supported, among others, by GOAL, an Irish NGO led by internationally acclaimed sports writer John O?Shea and former Wimbledon champion Pat Cash. We know it as an NGO run by Gautam Ghosh and his motivated team. The girls that danced their way into our hearts that evening, know them as the first people who are concerned about where they will go, not where they came from!

I don?t really know where they will go; but I know where they won?t! I?m not sure whether Vinod, who wants to be an actor, will take off to where Munna Bhai and his dad come from; but I know that Vinod will get off the streets; and make it good!