Pujas- A Happy Time?

Hope all of you enjoyed the Durga Pujas as much as I did...

The Pujas mean different things to different people. While some of us love the pandal hopping and the constant gorging on junk food, others are fond of the family reunions it brings along. While some associate it with sindoor khela on a calm dashami morning, others are reminded of the faint smell of dhoop and shiuli flowers in the air.

To each one of us, however, it means a period of joy and happiness. It is sad then, to think of the thousands of children to whom it means a short respite from a never ending blur of toil and hard work, long hours and empty stomachs. These children are the ones who slog away in the by lanes of Kumartuli all through the year, crafting the idols and presenting them in all their finery, making it a Pujas we'll remember forever. What is worse is that, amidst all the festivity, few of us think of these unfortunate children, stripped of their childhood and innocence.
I urge all of you to spare a few minutes and think of all these children and thank them for the wonderful festival they make it.

The two thought-provoking pictures below capture the contrasting lives of children before and during the Pujas, on two different sides of the same line...

Photo courtesy: telegraphindia.com; unboundether.blogspot.com

Sonam Chamaria
CRY Volunteer

What are you waiting for??

Since 2006, every year, a group of students of Indian Institute of Management- Calcutta (members of INCA) works on social projects in discussion with Volunteer Action team at CRY Kolkata. This year too, around their campus event Mandi, they pushed their boundaries!

In the array of things that were done, a blog competition, ‘The other side of life… Stand up for Child Rights’ was launched on September 23rd, 2010 to know views and experiences on child rights and loop in the entire student community..! Amidst many entries that were received, three very soulful entries were adjudged as the top three, which were written by Chandrasekhar Venugopal, Sachit Handa, and Vaibhav Tiwari! These were put up on the wall of a CRY stall at Mandi.

The following section has these three pieces. Am sure it will find resonance in your heart and will kindle urge and zeal in every one of us to not just feel bad about the situation of children in India but do something about it!

Please do read and share your thoughts as comments or a fresh piece in this blog…

Anupama
CRY, Kolkata

“Chai Sir?”

Beads of sweat trickle down his grimy face as he makes his way through the shoddy marketplace. “Chai sir?” asks the thirteen year old in a squeaky voice as the mechanic in the repair shop impassively picks up a cup of tea from the rack that he has been carrying for the past two years. “Chai sir?” he moves on to the next shop. He has to sell out the six cups of tea in his rack to earn his dinner. He isn’t paid much, but he doesn’t realize the value of money, and knows not how to protest. He continues wearily through the row of shops. He knows every one of them by now…from the outside though. He loves walking past the toy shop, but is careful not to stand there for too long…the owner is not very kind to him. He has been screamed at a number of times. He remembers the first day he came across the toy shop. He got slapped by the owner for putting his hands up on the window and leaving his hand prints all over it. He’s more careful now. He loves all the colorful toys inside and the stuffed toys amuse him, especially the big brown ‘Bhalu’ in the corner. “Chai sir?” he moves on. He likes the cobbler who sits in the corner. The gray haired man is nice to him, and he has a perpetual smile on his face. The boy likes his happy face. “Chai Baba?” he asks. He is the only person the boy addresses this way…he is the only person the boy wants to address this way. The old man smilingly takes a cup of tea from the rack. The boy wishes to strike a conversation but seeing him busy polishing the shoes of an impatient man in a suit and a tie, he moves on. The cobbler isn’t going anywhere, he thinks. He has been working on the exact same spot, every single day for the past two years. “Sir Chai?” he hands out the last two cups of tea and heads back. He’s happy with his work. He was quick today and can afford to amble near the toy shop for a little while before he returns to the tea stall. He doesn’t really want to return, he would be made to wash the dishes . He would rather sit on the sidewalk and watch the cars flash past him. He likes counting the number of red vehicles that go by, although he knows how to count only till ‘six’…the number of cups of tea in his rack. But that doesn’t stop him from counting till six over and over again. After a while he heads back to the tea stall only to get a scolding for being late. He doesn’t regret spending that extra time on the sidewalk though.

He sleeps peacefully. There’s nothing much on his mind. His world is confined only to the tea stall and the shops around it, and not much happens in this world of his. He knows not of politics, knows not of religion, knows not of a better life. He wakes up, neither happy nor sad. He knows the rack awaits him. He feels happy at the thought of crossing the toy shop. He hopes to talk to the cobbler today. With the rack by his side, he sets off.

It’s the usual routine. “Chai sir?” he asks hopefully to his regular customers. He slows down past the toy shop…the new bicycle on the display window catches his eye, and so does the owner who is standing at the door. Scared, the boy hurries away from that place. He can catch a glimpse of the shining bicycle on his way back, and if he’s lucky enough that no rich kid buys it today, he might get a chance to see it tomorrow too . He moves on hoping to catch the cobbler without a customer today. But an unfamiliar sight awaits him. The spot where the cobbler sits is empty. He is surprised and looks around hoping to catch sight of the old man somewhere around. Maybe the municipality folks are giving him trouble again, he thinks. He waits for a few minutes hoping the cobbler would show up, with that familiar comforting smile on his face. But work beckons and he can’t wait any longer. He’s sold only two cups today. The relentless heat neither helps the sales nor does it help his tread along the blistering sidewalk. On his way back he overhears the mechanics from the repair shop talking about something that chills him to his core… about the demise of the old man. The boy is taken aback. He finds a strange feeling of sadness overcoming him. He feels weak at his knees. He doesn’t want to sell tea today. But he has to, or go hungry at night. His cries of “Chai sir?” go faint. He manages to sell the remaining cups of tea and returns to another scolding for being late. He doesn’t seem to care. He can’t seem to get the face of the old man out of his thoughts. He doesn’t sleep peacefully. A lot is on his mind. His small world has changed in a big way.

He knows not of politics, he knows not of religion, he knows not of a better life, but like every other human being, he knows of pain, he knows of loss. He knows of the comfort of a friendly face and craves for companionship. He knows of the joy toys can bring to him, but has never had a chance to feel that joy. But unlike the thirteen year olds who go to schools and get bicycles for their birthday, he knows only of walking barefoot in tattered clothes, selling tea. It is no fault of his of his though … It is the callousness of the society that it fails to realize that like every other human being…he is one too.

Sachit Handa

This piece was chosen as one of the top three entries at the blog competition at the CRY stall at IIM-C's campus event- Mandi.

Trading Memories

Remember those days, when you were walking back home, drenched in the rain, cold and shivering, just waiting for your mother to start giving you the “I told you not to go out and play in the rain during exams” line. What made it all worth it was the way she toweled your hair, shoved you into those warm clothes and gave you a hot cup of chocolate afterwards. Ah! Life was good. And no matter what problems I face in my life in the future I know that I can always go back to those memories and feel warm again. And so can you.

What if you never had those memories? What if you never had a chance to live that life? What if, instead, you were drenched in the rain delivering newspapers early in the morning and came back home, not to change your clothes but to wake up your siblings on the way to your next day job?

We take a lot of things for granted. All the strengths we possess, all the luxuries we enjoy, all the knowledge we make use of and all the support we bank on. But we don’t realize that whatever we assume we have a right over is not accessible by most of the children around us. If you do not agree to the fact that it is “most” of the children then you do not see them, or rather, you choose not to.

I beg you, look not in the malls you flock to, but the roads you travel on to get there; see not the LEVIS or the NIKE’s but the chaat-walas and the dhabas; engage not with the concierges and the DJs, but that drenched newspaper delivery boy and you WILL find them, you WILL see them and you WILL feel for them.

For, if you still don’t feel for them, then you must be willing to let your children go through such circumstances and fend for themselves. You must be willing to trade all those warm memories you had as a child. After, all if you could trade your memories then that poor little child would definitely buy it for a tad of conscience.

So what can you change? What can you do about this? The magic of it all is that- YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING. Open your eyes and choose to see these things. The rest, my friend, will come to you automatically.

Chandrasekhar Venugopal

This piece was chosen as one of the top three entries at the blog competition at the CRY stall at IIM-C's campus event- Mandi.

The Girl With Red Roses..

My work took me to Mumbai many months ago. Few years in the industry had made me agile enough to bargain for an unofficial Friday leave. My boss' nod had made it a 3-day cheap getaway of some sorts. At any rate, it was a welcome break from familiar work and faces. After negotiating the job to satisfaction, I loitered happily an entire August afternoon. I was to meet some friends in the evening at Bandstand. I said "Bandra" to one autowallah and hopped in. On the way, I found myself peeping outside this cheap auto, smiling at a magnificent yellow Porsche Carrera that had stopped beside us at a traffic signal. Cars catch my fancy and my initial reaction was one of sheer wow, luck and happiness. The Porsche was gorgeous but it wasn't stupendous until one of the windows rolled down. One of the occupants was so beautiful that I immediately accepted that both of us were in our respective places. Her co-occupant was, well, an overly, overtly muscled, tattooed, damn-lucky idiot in his early-20s, who decided not to work hard and instead binge on his dad's money (lucky chap was sensible too, for no way with his hard work he would have managed those two muses at one time at that age!). The atmosphere inside the car was nothing short of the extraordinary and I won't describe how. Small-town blokes don’t get to see anything like a Porsche often and to have seen the two ladies - the magnificent marque and that pretty somebody - I immediately developed mild associations with Karl Marx. At least I wanted to argue with those who are rightly called ‘right- minded’ that the Germans shouldn't be allowed to make so opulent cars and then put just two seats inside instead of 4; it would drive the Capitalists' society to doom at double the incumbent rate. A child's voice from the other side of the road broke the silly trajectory of my thoughts. I saw a little girl walk up to me, her face half-covered below bunches of red roses which were neatly tied in small bundles. She walked a few steps closer up to me with unsure, measured steps, but having that infant-like audacity to maintain a prolonged eye contact with the subject. She stood before me with a sullen smile on her face – a street child, 7 yrs old or so, downtrodden, shabby like them street kids, who all look the same. I smiled back at her, and she promptly held out a bunch of red roses to me. It was then that I realized that my affection could cost me. One art that comes handy when you have to stop at long traffic signals (which is often) is looking away in the other direction when someone is choking you with some request. I guess I must be bad at this for I sometimes find myself actually trying to talk my way out of such situations and end up spending money more often than I intend to. I wanted to tell her how the colour of the roses made it practically meaningless for me to help her. As is my wont, I reached out for my camera and clicked her picture while trying to steer clear of the common-place situation. I saw her eying my camera with a fearless curiosity. I held the camera out to her. She was instantly overjoyed to see herself in the picture. The grim curves on her cheeks had stretched into an innocent, conveying smile, and her eyes were a sparkle. I thought it reasonable to spend 10 rupees on roses themselves; after all, they were beautiful and I decided to buy, even if it meant that I would have to leave them behind in the auto. (I couldn’t have carried it to my friend’s surely) I handed over a 20 rupee note, gesturing to her with a subtle, casual wave of hands that she may keep the change. She promptly and neatly tucked the note inside a large front pocket of her t-shirt and took out a crumpled ten-rupee note and held it out towards me. I quietly kept the change, deciding not to vandalize by use of language a fragile moment that was made precious by her intent, if not her sentiment. As if she was not too little herself to be spending a painfully-deprived childhood in having to fend for herself, I saw a lean kid, all of 3 years or thereabouts, hiding behind her frock. She picked him up in a manner of quick habit, hinging his bare, soiled buttocks on her waist and tucking him close. She rushed to a chai shop on the road side. I saw the child rolling itself behind the folds of her arms, trying to reach out to something across the counter with outstretched, tiny hands. Seeing her struggle in the middle of unknown faces left me agitated. I heard the engines crank up and rev again; the signal had opened. The Porsche made the most distinctive rev of pride. The only rev that was compelling enough to reach my heart was that caused by the story that played out right before my eyes. I bent over to look for the girl. As the auto negotiated the corner, I saw this girl feeding milk and bun to her infant belonging. Suddenly, something gave way inside my heart, like a stretched cord of emotions snapping under load. Uninhibited by shame and moved by guilt, I cried briefly. When the tide of emotion subsided, it had forged a bed of anguish inside the heart. The auto had hit the main road and was cutting past other vehicles in a manner that announced urgency when there was none. The Mumbai streets were attractive again: wide roads, big cars, happy families, pretty faces and the chance to while away a cosy evening. Just that all of it did not convey anything greater than themselves. My vision had gotten blurred and I found my eyes staring at my thoughts. My anguish reduced to sorrow, as it always does, as it always must. I wondered about our desires to get "rich" to buy hordes of happiness for ourselves and our people and how it amounted to little more than social-mania unless nurtured the right way. I tried to revisit and understand better the idea of life & existence, happiness & sorrow, and further, the handling and execution of our individual destinies (by God, or whoever). Funny that a 90-second traffic stop was all it took to unhinge my composure completely that day. I wish I could explain how helplessly grim it feels to be inhuman. Many more questions crashed on the silent shores of my mind, many dreams became smaller and a few prayers got added to what is a long list of heartfelt wishes. I looked down at the roses lying in my lap. I plucked the soft petals carefully in a small pile. Separating myself free of earthbound particulars, I looked up at the sky and after a prolonged consideration at the meaning of my action, I flung them towards the evening sky. The breeze gladly whipped them into furious motion. I saw the ruby petals whirling behind me gaily. They looked more beautiful in their individual flights, and somewhere inside I too felt liberated.

Vaibhav Tiwari

This piece was chosen as one of the top three entries at the blog competition at the CRY stall at IIM-C's campus event- Mandi.

Your Opinion Matters

CRY Volunteer Action has come up with an information bulletin -POV: Views You can Use on the Mid-day Meal Scheme (MDMS) in India.
As part of this program, we invite readers to voice your opinion on 'Should children have a say in deciding the menu for mid day meals served in schools'. The poll will be shared with the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR).
Make a difference. Do your bit for child rights today. Click here. Cast your vote.

Sonam Chamaria

CRY volunteer