INEQUALITY…QUESTIONS…ALTERNATIVES!

I don’t quite remember when was the first time I was told about why we celebrate independence day, but it looks like I always knew why we celebrate it until…

On India’s 66^th Independence Day I visited a small cluster called ‘ Thakarwadi’. Thakarwadi is one of the four clusters in a village called Kunegaon. The best way to introduce Kunegaon would be to say that it’s next to India’s largest adventure club which is at Lonavla. I have never been to a more personified example of inequality. Within 100 meters from the place where there is no safe, clean drinking water, where no one has ever studied beyond 7^th std, where there are electricity polls but no light, where the sunshine never reaches the house as there are no windows, where the state transport refuses to provide services since there is only one village on the hill, where children on an average walk 5-7kms a day, is this big adventure park where what people spend on a weekend is more than the annual income of some of the thakars!!

Our agenda for the visit was to attend a gram sabha meeting happening of a gram panchayat. Post the meeting we came back to the cluster to speak to the villagers and that’s when we met a group of 20-25 children who were playing, chasing a butterfly, making Ganesh Idols from the clay. After playing few games with them we gave them sheets of paper and colors to draw and paint. Suddenly during the painting session the number of kids increased.  As always, I saw how children enjoyed creating their own colorful world. Although it was an Independence Day, I was a little surprised to see how no one painted a National Flag. (As oppose to this, during one of the painting session at a Govt run children’s home in Mumbai last week, I saw quite a few kids drawing a National Flag).

We were sitting in a classroom of the primary school which is smaller than a 3BHK Flat. It has two classrooms, one of which was closed as it’s turned into a mini storage room. So, all the children from 1^st to 4^th sit in one classroom.

As the children were busy drawing, I looked at the National Flag hoisted outside the School. When I asked the children why we celebrate Independence Day, no one could answer. Their faces went blank. The average age of children there must have been 12yrs and most of them were going to school. For a minute or so I was totally blank. I was hoping that at least one of them would say something related to our Independence Day, but everyone was looking at me with a puzzled look.

I couldn’t believe I was experiencing it. I knew that this probably happens in many villages but experiencing it was a different feeling!!

I somehow managed to explain them why we celebrate our Independence Day but it left me with so many unanswered questions…

• What is Independence?
•  Is it different for me, you, those children, those people coming to spend their weekend at the Adventure Park?
•  Is the inequality the effect of Independence or an inherited element?
•  Is Independence something that one can teach another? Through textbooks or a video?
•  Do I feel Independent because I am educated? Because I earn decent amount of Money? Because I can talk a language which most part of the developed world speaks? OR because I understand the responsibility that it brings along with it?
• Have we lost the essence of being Independent in the race of becoming someone else, something else?            
• Are we too ahead of time to think of Alternative Education when there are millions of children who do not even get basic Education?

Visiting one cluster of around 50 houses with not more than 150 children led to so many questions. Questions which have no ONE or RIGHT answer. But all these questions lead me to two things – Inequality and Development!! Rather than having an inverse relation, these two seems to be going hand in hand.

• How do we break this cycle of Inequality and yet fulfill the desire of development?
• How do we shift the paradigm of development from raising inequality to increase in access to equal opportunity?

INEQUALITY…QUESTIONS…ALTERNATIVES!

Every child is special!

I read this on a T-shirt worn by a boy in Government Children’s Home. Below this was written ‘Department of Woman & Child Development’.

But is every child really special? Over last one and half week, I was part of and came across incidences which tells me that practically it’s an over ambitious statement not only for the Government but also for the development sector and society at large!

Beginning of last week, we found a 7-8yr old girl who could not speak and was mentally challenged. We contacted around 4-5 institutions to check with them whether they can admit her in their home. Some said NO because of lack of capacity, some because of the provisions mentioned in the acts governing such homes.

She was finally taken to a Government Home, a place where children with special needs are put together with other children in need of care and protection. Although our intention was good, we could not take her to the place where she would have given extra care and attention.

During one of my weekly visits to Government home, I saw a 14-15yr old boy who could not speak and was handicapped from his legs below knees. I have seen him even once before. Both the times when he was to be presented to the child welfare committee, the only caretaker who accompanied him was a 12yr old boy! There was no one else to help him walk, no one to pick him up as he could not climb up the stairs!!

Just before the weekend there was a girl found on one of the railway stations, she looked ill and sick. When taken to the doctor, the doctor said she is at the last stage of the TB and there are no chances of her to be saved. She doesn’t have a father and her mother seemed mentally unstable. The little girl passed away on Saturday :(

Yet, Every Child is Special!

The spiritual and philosophical side of me tells me that this was meant to happen! You play a role which you are supposed to. Well, agreed to a certain extent, but I strongly believe that we shape our own destiny and make our own life with the choices we make.

The practical side of me is now trying to find out ways in which some of these issues can be addressed. Questioning the way it is done till now…questioning the approach and the attitude…hoping I will reach a place beyond the battle of my rights v/s your responsibilities….a place where ‘Every child is special’ is more close to reality.

But I must admit here…that I am scared! Firstly of being getting used to all this, getting into the trap of right doing and wrong undoing and losing my emotions and I am pessimistic thinking we as a community have reached a stage from where it might become impossible for us to return…and the situation is slowly yet steadily going out of our hands, waiting to explode someday…SOON!!

(The views and opinions mentioned are strictly individual and not part of being any organization)

Do I...Should I...Will I...Will It ???

Will this ever change?

Will you ever understand what I really want?

Can you look through my eyes, see and feel what I go through when I work 12-14hrs a day without even going to toilet?

Do I want to go to school?

Do I want to be with my family?

Do I love going to work?

Do I like living on the street?

Do I love the city life, the freedom that I get, the drugs that I take, the time I spent on footpath?

Do I want to go back home?

Do I want to learn a skill to get a good job?

I really DO NOT KNOW!!!

But I also don’t know why you are asking me all these questions?

Why can’t you just let me BE!!

I will talk when I WANT TO…not when I am ASKED TO…
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wrote this one during the workshop I recently attended on child labour. Somewhere felt that the most urgent need of an hour is to look into the eyes of these children, listen to them and let them BE!! Due to our constant guilt and ambition of making the world a better place for children, we fail to realize that we are simply experimenting with them. Be it...rescuing them from work and dumping into the Govt. home or into an NGO shelter or send them back home. 


We are in so much hurry to make things RIGHT that as soon as we see any child alone, our immediate reaction is - Let's get him to some place safe...the assumption being the place where he is right now is not SAFE and he is not HAPPY being just there!!


At the beginning of this journey that I have undertaken to resolve the issue of Child Labour, I am facing a moral question - Who am I to decide that the child is better off with his family or at shelter and not when he is working at a Zari factory? How can I decide that education is ONE solution for all the children and that every child should not work but go to school?


Who am I to decide? ?


I am trying as hard as I can to remind myself every time that in this journey, I should not take actions to do what I feel is right, but my first responsibility is to listen to these children and give them the space they require...for may be all they need is TIME!

Children of the PYRE!!!

We are guilty of many errors and many faults,
But our worst crime is abandoning the children, Neglecting the fountain of life
Many things we need can wait ,But the child cannot.

Right now is the time; His bones are being formed,
His senses are being developed, His blood is being made
To him, we cannot answer, “Tomorrow”,
His name is “Today”.

By Gabriel Mistral

I was 14 when I lost both my parents, at that tender age all I could understand was that I missed their presence in my daily routine and missed hugging my mother in the night & playing & getting pampered by my Dad J!!!

Childhood...it’s the most beautiful period of our life...a period in which we experience the bliss of life as we are not trapped in the wheels of attachment & expectations. In spite of losing my parents at an early age, I was fortunate to have had a wonderful childhood where every day was worth cherishing!

So when I came across a documentary film – Children of the Pyre ; not in my wildest dream I had thought that the whole idea of childhood would be so different for children living 1500kms away from me...in a city which is country’s oldest & holiest religious place, A city of Lord Shiva, Gautam Buddha, Sant Kabir and Ganga Mata...A City of Varanasi!

For a 15yr old Ravi, childhood means eating 15-20 packets of gutakha (tobacco) everyday, have गांजा (marijuana) in the night and make his living by burning 20-25 dead bodies.

Yes! Ravi is one among hundreds of children who are – Children of the Pyre, whose day begins and ends by hearing ‘Ram nam satya hai’ (a mantra said while carrying a dead body – means the name of ram is truth) and during the day, it’s a battle with the fire which they fight to pay the funeral rites to thousands of bodies which come at Manikarnika cremation ground – India’s most busiest cremation ground!

Some of you would know this, but for me this was the worst account of humanity, religion, hypocrisy and a complete disrespect for the ‘All Mighty’

My first reaction after watching the films was – I was ridiculed by the naked reality, I was sad, into tears imagining to what extend can a human conscious degrade under the veil of religion, rituals, practices and संस्कार!

Every boy’s story is the same - मज़बूरी का नाम ज़िन्दगी! They say if given a choice who would want to come back to this place! Yet I saw that each one of them had mastered in accepting the reality and was truly living in a ‘moment’. Their life is full of so much uncertainty but still they manage to retain their childhood by enjoying themselves thoroughly.

But the downside is...there is hardly any hope! Hope & ambitions are very closely related to the dreams we have or we see, but for these children who literally sleep in the cremation ground...all they dream about are dead bodies, burning pyres, half burnt parts of dead bodies which they have to pick up and throw back into the pyre! One of the boys said, in the night he sees all the dead bodies get up & have bath at the Ganges! Scary isn’t it!!!

The film has a very deep & haunting impact on my life. Somehow...somewhere I am unable to accept that when one of our loved one dies, we are actually using hands of 14-15yr olds to burn their pyre. (& BTW...a friend of mine told me that people even negotiate the rates with these children for doing so!)

If this was not enough, the biggest irony came when it was shown in the film that these children are considered as ‘untouchables’. Why! Because they touch what no other person has got balls to touch! Dead bodies...half burnt parts of dead bodies!

There is so much that I learned from these children. They are stronger both physically and emotionally that ANYONE else I have ever known!

The PYRE still remains an integral part of hundreds of children at the Manikarnika ghat of Benaras...but there is light...HOPE!

Post the documentary, An NGO based out of Varanasi has started a project called ‘Bhagirathi’ to rehabilitate 300 children...an attempt to give them the childhood that they deserve!!!

P.S. – I would really urge everyone to watch this film once. But a word of advice – Be prepared to watch some of the most disturbing real life incidences of your life and please do not watch it alone!

A request not to download or use a pirated copy.

You can buy the dvd from - http://www.ucfilms.in/subject/exclusion/children-of-the-pyre/