Grand Canal Road

“In the last two years my house has been broken 3 times”, recalls the little girl in fear and agony. Kuki aged 10, is one among the several kids whose families live along the numerous illegal homes built along the Grand Canal road just adjacent to the never stopping wheels of the Circular Railways. Well, it would be an irony to reckon the 15 by 6 feet tarpaulin covered mud-structure in which she stays to be actually called as a house. She stays along with her mother and a widowed sister in these drench squatters. “In this age of price-hike it’s impossible for me to find a safe home for these two young girls”, laments her mother. The house is just some 10m away from the train track and the residents have to be extra cautious every time they come out to avoid a mishap. Moreover, the girls are often subjected to sexual harassment where often some drunkard comes on their outskirts and spits evil foul there.

All the 3 members of the family work as domestic maids in the neighborhood apartments dazzling along the riverside.. “Kuki”, expresses her mother, “is presently in her training phase, plus she earns nearly 140 rupees a month and compensates my work when I can’t go due to ill health.”

But the most reveling side of the story is that in-spite of all her suffocation spending dark hours of gloom, she goes to school. Yes she goes to the neighborhood KMC School studying in standard 2 attaining basic elementary education in Bengali, numbers and painting.

“I love drawing different objects of nature” recalls the little girl on whom these object of nature have been rather unfair.
From the school she rushes back straight to join hands with her mother and after two hours of rigorous work she get to eat her first meal of the day with her mother, the quantity of which depends upon the leftover of her employers. Then following her siesta, she undertakes a two hour duel in the name of her own work entrusted with sweeping and washing dishes before returning to accompany her elder sister in her work. The only time she gets to revise her lessons and to her homework is at the dead of the night when the remaining family falls asleep.

“I myself want her to study and change our fortune but first she needs rice in her stomach which we cannot guarantee at present.” It looks clearly evident that Kuki would have to discontinue her studies in a year or so and like many other girls of her community, she would be gripped in the evil of domestic labour rippling all her childhood.

It seems ardent that despite talent, interest and the desire to learn, innumerous kids of these underprivileged families are deprived of education clearly making a blot on our country. What’s even worse is the fact that the entire education system and government policies have failed in all their efforts to provide a cheerful life and quality education rather than such deprivation. Public funded responsive education is the panacea to address such malaise in society. It needs to ensure that every child is able to be in school for the desired number of hours and have a decent life, free from labour and exploitation- not getting devoid of a rightful “childhood”

Piyush Bagaria
IIT-Kharagpur