Of what life is made up
Recalling an Indian Summer.
“It seems that for children, garbage has a meaning different from what it means to their parents. For the former it is wrapped in wonder, for their elders, a means of survival.” ~Anees Jung
This would be the mid of May of three years ago. I am in high school right now, senior year. 2014. In the Language class we’ve just been through a short story, Lost Spring, Anees Jung’s autobiographical narrative of her seens of the slums of Seemapuri, in the first part, the periphery of the national capital, Delhi, and of the kids the slum ‘nurture’. The very first thought that striked me after finishing it, and which would remain circulating around my neurons for few a weeks, and even after all these years, other than pity and empathy, was ‘how India’s lagging behind’. I had these exact words copied back then. My friends and family would argue upon the indignation of the idea when I’d state it to them. I was a kid back then! Of course India’s ‘developing’: we’d tell each other. The vague idea formed in a classroom three years ago hasn’t been eradicated from my mind yet. India, still, has a long way to go.
Back then in my naive 2014, I had written after Anees’ “it is not lack of money but a tradition to stay barefoot, one explanation.” which she continues, “I wonder if this is only an excuse to explain away a perpetual state of poverty…” these words of mine, “here, where poverty’s an upper hand over humanity, people tend to believe in caste, rather than in religion!” It was a good thing, right? still is.
In the May morning of the day before, I took a shortcut to my school; I was late? I don’t remember. I haven’t taken that path often. It features a populated slum by; we call it Jhuggi here. Consisting of those kutcha huts, built out of clay, and every other conceivable material that could come cheap, and be used to wall up. A drain flowed through the conjugation: large, open, quiet, and black. When I glanced over it, I found a lady, probably in her thirties , torn Saree clasped around her, barefoot, standing. Standing in the midst of that ebony flow. As I kept on watching, she bent down a little, collected some dark ‘water’ in her folded-for-prayer like hands, now being used as a tumbler, and poured it all over her legs and forearms, by and by. She would bend, collect some more, and rub her limbs with it while the water darkened her melanins. Do I remember how I felt then? Did I even feel anything in the very first place? I can’t recall now. If I’m to guess, it’d be disgust: that’s human! Pity, maybe…an empathetic person that I’m. But what I’m sure of would be the minding of my own business. I passed by.
“Where all their future’s painted with a fog,
a narrow street sealed in with a lead sky,
far far from rivers, capes, and stars of words.”
~Stephen Spender.
Now that I look back at it, I realize there’s a lot more to it than blaming for human condition here. De facto anywhere! Blaming others. The nation. The leaders, government, our society, culture? People, that very wretched woman over the dirty waters for her own situation!
And I for one, don’t remember taking that shortcut ever again.
more of my life —
