My InTeRvIew With the AmArAnThinE : a nonstop- never retiring- never resting mobile cover seller.
Mumbai : 28th June 2009
“PANCH ka ek...PANCH ka ek...” (5Rs for 1).....
...... Were the words meticulously uttered repeatedly without any fatigue or any pause until he found a passerby passenger of the dadar local station halting to take a glance at the collection of lustutors glossy plastic mobile phone pouches and trying to make a deal with the kid with the mobile accessorises, a bunch of mobile rappers.
“ ek ka PANCH? “ (1Rs for 5) I offered a bargain, just to make a conversation with this kid, who was looking not older than 8 yrs, with his shorts and shirt matching white and holding a bunch of covers of various colours and hopping around his two legs, may be to avoid the stress caused by continuous standing at one location.
The kid hurried in to laughter after hearing my bargain call and continued with his work, perhaps he is used to these bunch of putz who try to hamper the concentration with funny remarks and arguments.
“Sonu” said the boy in a tender scary voice when i asked what his name was and reported he was from a nearby locality. When asked regarding his business strategy, he told me he would purchase the pouches for Rs 3 and sell it for Rs 5. Well surely, this is a perfect example for the height of his innocence for he so openly tells me his selling tricks. But for a profit of mere 50 Rs per day, Sonu supposedly stands at the station walk way bridge from morning 7 am till evening 5 P.M.
Well , a thing that I could comprehend from my scarce interaction with the kid on the railway platform who is survived by his father is, that all the days hard work he puts in at this age, where he is supposed to busy playing and studying in school , is jus to fill his stomach. Yes just to survive the hunger he is forced by his situations to take up such a painstaking job that subjects him to continuous stress and fatigue & sometimes tensions with the ongoing public traffic.
Well let us once think out of the table or say out of the edge....
What if ? ? ?
What if ? ? ?
Had he been guaranteed his meal ? ? ? for free by our gregarious government ? ....Kids do deserve it....after all the MID-DAY-MEAL is guaranteed for children of primary sections in government run schools but I wonder how kids on the streets like Sonu miss the meals provided or at least why cant they be included in to the system ? well they would be imagined to be much of a burden to the government who instead spends amounts of money in to extraneous works like heavy public meetings or erecting their own statues up on the streets, where as the kids on streets are simply averted as a quantum of burden
Well anyways, What if ? ? ? was my point of chew
It would have been like definitely this....
Sonu would never have had to think about fulfilling his stomach to overcome his hunger...at least for his age, it’s a way too much of a burden for his little heart of 7-8 years old.. So instead of spending nearly 10 hours together standing and bargaining with moving crowd for earning his meals, he would have spent, at least some of this industrious effort he puts on selling his stuff, on something like education or sports, he would definitely, with the sort of sincerity and determination he posses he surely would strike gold in whatever he ventures in to.
Surely , SONU is one of those millions kids around the country, our developing country who are going undeveloped and are simply neglected as if they don’t belong to any one of us.
The sooner we realise this fact that our countries future lies within the hands and fate of these charming
I hope sooner or later we would open our eyes to wake up from the sleeps where we are dreaming of a developing or almost developed nation with developments in IT and many other sectors but with the children of our nation lagging back day by day, the development we are witnessing in nothing but a mirage and helping us burglarise our own nation with our own hands
: its government & public, U & me together, can bring a change
Education is the solution to all the problems. Educate to eradicate Problems.
Hi Sekar,
ReplyDeleteOnce again, you hit the chord. Education not studies and degrees alone can change the state of life of Sonu and the likes. I heard about the Fashion street a lot when I first landed in Mumbai - it was export rejected goods is what I learned. I visited Goa the first time, learned that the superior quality of Cashews is called export quality and that is not available in domestic markets. I'm made in India myself and the rest is .....
I've seen and learned a few different things here. There are big box stores doing business all over - went to a local library to see a good number of books came from one and went to a homeless shelter to a few tariler loads of food came from another. There are non-profit organizations identifying opportunities and co-ordinating efforts - there are bigger corporations providing man-hours. I've been at volunteer events where people from all walks of life work with a common mission. In India I worked for a MNC and we went on picnics and parties all the time but never went out together to lend a hand to anyone.
We do have a few places like some Charity hospitals I know of in India. But, compassion towards a fellow human outside family/friend circle is not very common. I have friends who visit orphanages with treats on occassions. But I know of only one person who went in and brought someone home from there.
There are too many people and the value of each just went vanishing. I always came across this statement - aapke bachche - bachche; mere bachche - jansankhya'..... We need to start valueing every human. We need to start respecting labor - any and every kind. We need to pitch in together to build houses lost in natural calamities just out of compassion rather than wait for relief workers traveling hundereds of miles. We need to share responsiblity of our nation than wait and complaint that the Government does nothing. We the people form and empower the Govt.
Keep up your good work and continue culturing your good thoughts. Hope that your thoughts and actions would be followed by many and we will see the change you dream of.