Lost Spring
“Why do you do this?” I ask Saheb whom I
encounter every morning scrounging for
gold in the garbage dumps of my
neighbourhood. Saheb left his home long
ago. Set amidst the green fields of Dhaka,
his home is not even a distant memory.
There were many storms that swept away
their fields and homes, his mother tells
him. That’s why they left, looking for gold
in the big city where he now lives.
Lost Spring
“I have nothing else to do,” he mutters, looking away.
“Go to school,” I say glibly, realising immediately how hollow the
advice must sound.
“There is no school in my neighbourhood. When they build one, I will
go.”
“If I start a school, will you come?” I ask, half-joking.
“Yes,” he says, smiling broadly.
A few days later I see him running up to me. “Is your school ready?”
“It takes longer to build a school,” I say, embarrassed at having made a
promise that was not [Link] promises like mine abound in every
corner of his bleak world.
After months of knowing him, I ask him his name. “Saheb-e Alam,” he
announces. He does not know what it means. If he knew its meaning —
lord of the universe — he would have a hard time believing it. Unaware
of what his name represents, he roams the streets with his friends, an
army of barefoot boys who appear like the morning birds and
disappear at noon. Over the months, I have come to recognise each of
them.
“Why aren’t you wearing chappals?” I ask one.
“My mother did not bring them down from the
shelf,” he answers simply.
“Even if she did he will throw them off,” adds
another who is wearing shoes that do not
match. When I comment on it, he shuffles his
feet and says nothing. “I want shoes,” says a
third boy who has never owned a pair all his
life. Travelling across the country I have seen
children walking barefoot, in cities, on village
roads. It is not lack of money but a tradition to
stay barefoot, is one explanation. I wonder if
this is only an excuse to explain away a
perpetual state of poverty.
I remember a story a man from Udipi once told me. As a young boy he
would go to school past an old temple, where his father was a priest.
He would stop briefly at the temple and pray for a pair of shoes. Thirty
years later I visited his town and the temple, which was now drowned
in an air of desolation. In the backyard, where lived the new priest,
there were red and white plastic chairs. A young boy dressed in a grey
uniform, wearing socks and shoes, arrived panting and threw his
school bag on a folding bed. Looking at the boy, I remembered the
prayer another boy had made to the goddess when he had finally got a
pair of shoes, “Let me never lose them.” The goddess had granted his
prayer. Young boys like the son of the priest now wore shoes. But many
others like the ragpickers in my neighbourhood remain shoeless.
My acquaintance with the barefoot
ragpickers leads me to Seemapuri, a
place on the periphery of Delhi yet
miles away from it, metaphorically.
Those who live here are squatters who
came from Bangladesh back in 1971.
Saheb’s family is among them.
Seemapuri was then a wilderness.
It still is, but it is no longer empty. In
structures of mud, with roofs of tin and
tarpaulin, devoid of sewage, drainage or
running water, live 10,000 ragpickers. They
have lived here for more than thirty years
without an identity, without permits but
with ration cards that get their names on
voters’ lists and enable them to buy grain.
Food is more important for survival than
an identity.
“If at the end of the day we can feed our families and go to bed
without an aching stomach, we would rather live here than in the fields
that gave us no grain,” say a group of women in tattered saris when I
ask them why they left their beautiful land of green fields and rivers.
Wherever they find food, they pitch their tents that become transit
homes. Children grow up in them, becoming partners in survival. And
survival in Seemapuri means rag-picking. Through the years, it has
acquired the proportions of a fine art. Garbage to them is gold. It is
their daily bread, a roof over their heads, even if it is a leaking roof. But
for a child it is even more.
“I sometimes find a rupee, even a ten-rupee note,” Saheb says, his eyes
lighting up. When you can find a silver coin in a heap of garbage, you
don’t stop scrounging, for there is hope of finding more. It seems that
for children, garbage has a meaning different from what it means to
their parents. For the children it is wrapped in wonder, for the elders it
is a means of survival.
One winter morning I see Saheb standing by the fenced gate of the
neighbourhood club, watching two young men dressed in white,
playing tennis. “I like the game,” he hums, content to watch it standing
behind the fence. “I go inside when no one is around,” he admits. “The
gatekeeper lets me use the swing.”
Saheb too is wearing tennis shoes that look strange over his
discoloured shirt and shorts. “Someone gave them to me,” he says in
the manner of an explanation. The fact that they are discarded shoes
of some rich boy, who perhaps refused to wear them because of a hole
in one of them, does not bother him. For one who has walked barefoot,
even shoes with a hole is a dream come true. But the game he is
watching so intently is out of his reach.
This morning, Saheb is on his way to the
milk booth. In his hand is a steel canister.
“I now work in a tea stall down the road,”
he says, pointing in the distance. “I am
paid 800 rupees and all my meals.” Does
he like the job? I ask. His face, I see, has
lost the carefree look. The steel canister
seems heavier than the plastic bag he
would carry so lightly over his shoulder.
The bag was his. The canister belongs to
the man who owns the tea shop. Saheb is
no longer his own master!
Word Meaning
Acquaintance ⟶ known
Admist ⟶ in the middle of
Barefoot ⟶ without wearing slippers
Bleak ⟶ Empty
Bother ⟶ To worry(‘pareshan krna’)
Content ⟶ Satisfied
Desolation ⟶ Emptiness
Discarded ⟶ Thrown away,, left
Embarrassed ⟶ Feeling Guilty, ashamed
Excuse ⟶ A reason to justify the fault
Hollow ⟶ meaningless
Word Meaning
Lighting up ⟶ to show joy
Metaphorically ⟶ symbolically
Mutters ⟶ To speak in low tone
Panting ⟶ to take breathe quickly
Periphery ⟶ side or outer area of town
Permits ⟶ legal papers, document
Perpetual state ⟶ condition of being poor
of poverty
Wilderness ⟶ a wasteland or desotate area
Squatters ⟶ People who migrate from one place to another
Tattered ⟶ torn
Word Meaning
Transit homes ⟶ Temporary homes