LOST SPRING: STORIES OF STOLEN CHILDHOOD
Anees Jung
GIST OF THE LESSON
The author examines and analyses the impoverished conditions and traditions that condemn
the slum children to a life of deprivation and exploitation. These children are denied an
education and forced into hardships early in their lives.
The writer encounters Saheb, a rag picker, who lives in Seemapuri. His parents, like many
other families, have left Dhaka in 1971 and have come to Delhi to manage a living by rag
picking.
The author next tells about another victim of deprivation and abuse, Mukesh, who wants to
be a motor mechanic. Hailing from Firozabad, the centre of India’s bangle making and glass
blowing industry, he had dared to defy the ‘god-given lineage’ of bangle making.
SAHEB AND MUKESH – SEPERATED BY DISTANCES, BUT UNTED IN THEIR
PLIGHT AND EXPLOITATION BY SOCIETY
1. SAHEB – scrounges for rags - ‘gold’ to 1. MUKESH - a child labour, who lives in
them – in the big city. He does so because Firozabad, the centre of India’s glass-
he has nothing else to do. blowing industry where families have spent
2. He longs to study, but there is no school in generations working around furnaces,
the neighbourhood. welding glass and making bangles.
3. His name, “Saheb-e-Alam,” meaning ‘lord 2. Living conditions are menial - stinking lanes
of the universe’ is ironical to his situation. choked with garbage, homes that are hovels
4. He roams the streets with his friends, an with crumbling walls, wobbly doors, no
army of barefoot boys, picking rags. It is a windows and crowded with families of
tradition among the rag pickers to remain humans and animals coexisting in a primeval
barefoot -- only an excuse to explain away state. In dark hutments, next to lines of
a perpetual state of poverty. flames of flickering oil lamps, sit boys and
5. Survival in Seemapuri means rag- girls with their fathers and mothers, welding
picking.- pieces of coloured glass into circles of
A place on the periphery of Delhi yet bangles. Their eyes are more adjusted to the
distant from it in terms of living standards. dark than to the light outside. That is why
People here are squatters from Bangladesh, they often end up losing their eyesight before
come here in 1971. Saheb’s family is they become adults.
among them. Over 10,000 rag pickers 3. Bangle making is one’s karam, destiny in
reside here in structures of mud, with roofs Firozabad. It is their caste, a god-given
of tin and tarpaulin, devoid of sewage, lineage that can never be broken.
drainage or running water. They have lived 4. The wail of every bangle maker - “Ek waqt
here for more than thirty years without an ser bhar khana bhi nahin khaya,” The cry of
identity, without permits but with ration not having money to do anything except
cards that enable them to buy grain. Food is carry on the business of making bangles, not
more important for survival than an even enough to eat, rings in every home.
identity. 5. Two distinct worlds in Firozabad — one of
6. Garbage to them is gold. It is their daily the family, caught in a web of poverty,
bread, a roof over their heads, their sole burdened by the stigma of caste in which
means of existence. For the children it is they are born; the other a vicious circle of the
wrapped in wonder, for the elders it is a sahukars, the middlemen, the policemen, the
means of survival. keepers of law, the bureaucrats and the
7. One morning, the author finds Saheb on his politicians.
way to the milk booth. He works in a tea 6. However Mukesh has dared to dream, to be
stall is paid 800 rupees and all his meals. different. He wants to be a motor mechanic,’
However, his face has lost the carefree He is even willing to walk the long distance
look. Saheb is no longer his own master. to reach the garage. He is not willing to
He has surrendered to his situation. surrender to his situation.
SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS
1. What does Saheb do for living? Why?
Saheb is a rag picker. His family had left Dhaka in 1971 and had come to Delhi in quest of a
livelihood. The children like him are forced into rag picking as they have nothing else to do.
2. “Saheb is no longer his own master”, says the writer. What does she mean?
The writer means that having accepted the job with the tea-stall, Saheb has lost the
independence and the carefree looks that he enjoyed as a rag picker, even though he was
poor. Although he is paid 800 rupees and all his meals, it is at the cost of his freedom.
3. What does garbage symbolize for the adults and children?
Adults –means of earning a livelihood. Children –wrapped in wonder
4. What trade does the family of Mukesh follow? Why does the writer feel that it will be
difficult for Mukesh to break away from this tradition?
Engaged in bangle making - difficult to break away from this trade – fallen into the vicious
web of sahukars, the middlemen, policemen, politicians and bureaucrats who had trapped
their fathers and forefathers from which there is no escape. Even if they get organized, they
would be hauled by the police and dragged to jail for doing something illegal.
QUESTIONS FOR PRACTICE
SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS
1) What does the title of the story ‘Lost Spring’ imply?
2) How is Saheb’s name full of irony?
3) "Promises made to poor children are never kept." Explain with examples from the
lesson.
4) ‘His dreams loom like a mirage’. Whose dreams are being referred to and why are
they compared to a mirage?
5) ‘Together they have imposed the baggage on the child that he cannot put down.’ Who
do ‘they’ refer to? What is the ‘baggage’ and why can the child not get rid of it?
6) How is Mukesh’s attitude to his situation different from that of his family?
LONG ANSWER QUESTIONS
1) Like all children of his age, Saheb also had many hopes and dreams. Do you think
children like Saheb are able to fulfil their dreams?
2) Saheb wants to blossom and bloom but is nipped in the bud. Elaborate.
3) ‘Saheb and Mukesh are brothers in penury and suffering.’ Discuss.