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It was well past the bedtime of the three children, two girls and a boy. They could have been anywhere between five and ten. Chances are they look younger than their frail years because of malnourishment and stolen childhoods.
It’s not that you don’t see children like this peddling stuff — and tragically, occasionally, themselves — at many traffic lights in big cites. But here they are, selling the Indian tricolour. Small flags that in the light of the moon appear laminated — a shiny contrast to their dirt-smeared faces and dead eyes.
The thought that struck me then, and continues to haunt: What did these children gain from Independence? Put it a better way: What do they have to celebrate? Don’t get me wrong; you only have to play our national anthem and I get all goosepimply — Mera Bharat mahaan, truly.
Many of us do have a lot to celebrate. VS Naipaul’s ‘million mutinies’ have bubbled to the surface, and not burst. Parts of India have unbound themselves, as Gurcharan Das told anybody who would listen, till he finally wrote a book on the subject. A rapidly growing middle class and a resilient spirit of entrepreneurship now thrive on the Nike mantra of Just Do It.
Ambition is a democratic right. Hierarchies have tottered and crumbled with information technology and easy access to information. Many have the combination to the Fort Knox of knowledge. And, as we all are often told, India is shining. But what about the India in the shadows, where less is shining? Polls and economists tell us that the gap between rich and poor is widening. More have sunk into the hungry swamp lying in wait beneath the poverty line.
Sure, with a galloping population the numbers of the poor are bound to multiply exponentially. But this logic does not satisfactorily explain the rising number of those left behind in the nation’s blitzkrieg march to prosperity. We are not far behind the Chinese in the proportion of those left out of the rosy picture to those posing triumphantly in it.
For a moment think about the 20 million or more recently affected by devastating floods. There was nothing between them and the Ganga — and no umbrella of social security to protect them. As ever, they were victims of the vagaries of nature.
This neo-poverty hurts more because the traditionally comforting mantra — palliative, really — of simple living and high thinking that sustained the less fortunate down the centuries now rings hollow.
In our age of high living and perhaps simple thinking, the vast majority have to share the fate of Tantalus: tempted and forever denied satisfaction.
When those grapes of wealth are continuously dangled in your face (films, media, lifestyles of the rich and famous...the flip side of easy access to information) something has to sour. Life becomes that much more unlivable because you are led to believe that with luck and hard work you can be like them.
I will never forget the woman sweeping the road in Connaught Place some years ago. She wanted a few rupees to buy an aerated drink for her child, convinced that it would make him healthier because that’s what pudgy rich kids drank.
At least this little boy had a mother. Earlier this week I saw a documentary titled Chained Childhood in the Lanes of Nabi Karim. There were interviews of street children rescued from a gang controlling them in the innards of this notorious area in Delhi. One of them said that he was beaten when he did not meet his target; others said they were given less food or their salary cut when they brought in less. There was hardly a dry eye in the audience.
Perhaps, as a 60th birthday pledge we should make sure that films like this one are made and shown. And that at the next red light we stop to think about what we can do.
Email: jain_madhu@hotmail.com