About the author
Anees Jung (1964) was born in Rourkela and spent her childhood and adolescence in Hyderabad. She received her education in Hyderabad and in the United States of America. Her parents were both writers. Anees Jung began her career as a writer in India. she has been an editor and columnist for major newspapers in India and abroad, and has authored several books. The following is an excerpt from her book titled Lost Spring, Stories of Stolen Childhood. Here she analyzes the grinding poverty and traditions which condemn these children to a life of exploitation.
Lost spring: Stories of Stolen Childhood
'Sometimes I find a Rupee in the garbage'
"Why do you do this?" I ask Saheb whom I encounter every morning scrounging for gold in the garbage dumps of my neighborhood. Saheb left his home long ago. Set amidst the green fields of Dhaka, his home is not even a distant memory. There were many storms that swept away their fields and homes, his mother tells him. That's why they left, looking for gold in the big city where he now lives.
"I have nothing else to do," he mutters, looking away.
"Go to school," I say glibly, realizing immediately how hollow the advice must sound.
“There is no school in my neighbourhood. When they build one, I will go."
"If I start a school, will you come?" I ask, half-joking.
"Yes," he says, smiling broadly.
A few days later I see him running up to me. “Is your school ready?
"It takes longer to build a school," I say, embarrassed at having made a promise that was not meant. But promises like mine abound in every corner of his bleak world.
"Why aren't you wearing chappals?" I ask one.
"My mother did not bring them down from the shelf," he answers simply.
“Even if she did he would throw them off,” adds another. who is wearing shoes that don't match. When I comment on it, he shuffles his feet and says nothing. "I want shoes," says a third boy who has never owned a pair all his life. Traveling across the country I have seen children walking barefoot, in cities, on village roads. It is not lack of money but a tradition to stay barefoot, is one explanation. I wonder if this is only an excuse to explain away a perpetual state poverty.
I remember a story a man from Udipi once told me. as a young boy he would go to school past an old temple, where his father was a priest. He would stop briefly at the temple and pray for a pair of shoes. Thirty years later I visited his town and the temple, which was now drowned in an air of desolation. In the backyard, where the new priest lived, there were red and white plastic chairs. A young boy dressed in a gray uniform, wearing socks and shoes, arrived panting and threw his school bag on a folding bed. Looking at the boy remembered the prayer another boy had made to the goddess when he had finally got a pair of shoes, “Let me never lose them.” The goddess had granted his prayer. Young boys like the son of the priest now wore shoes. But many others like the ragpickers in my neighborhood remain shoeless.
My acquaintance with the barefoot ragpickers leads me to Seemapuri, a place on the periphery of Delhi yet miles away from it, metaphorically. Those who live here are squatters who came from Bangladesh back in 1971. Saheb's family is among them. Seemapuri was then a wilderness. it still is, but it is no longer empty. In structures of mud, with roofs of tin and tarpaulin, devoid of sewage, drainage or running water, live 10,000 ragpickers. They've lived here for more than thirty years without an identity, without permits but with ration cards that get their names on voters' lists and enable them to buy grain. Food is more important for survival than an identity. “If at the end of the day we can feed our families and go to bed without aching stomach, we would rather live here than in the fields that gave us no grain," say a group of women in tattered saris when I ask them why they left their beautiful land of green fields and rivers. Wherever they find food, they pitch their tents that become transit homes. Children grow up in them, becoming partners in survival. And survival in Seemapuri means rag-picking. Through the years, it has acquired the Proportions of a fine art. Garbage to them is gold. it is their daily bread, a roof over their heads, even if it is a leaking roof. But for a child it is even more.
“I sometimes find a rupee, even a ten-rupee note," Saheb says, his eyes lighting up. When you can find a silver coin in a heap of garbage, you don't stop scrounging, for there is hope of find more. It seems that for children, garbage has a meaning different from what it means their parents. For the children it is wrapped in wonder, for the elders it is a means of survival.
One winter morning I see Saheb standing by the fenced gate of the neighborhood club watching two young men dressed in white playing tennis. I like the game," he hums, content to watch it standing behind fence. "I go inside when no one is around," he admits. "The gatekeeper lets me use the swing."
Saheb too is wearing tennis shoes that look strange over his discolored shirt and shorts. “Someone gave them to me," he says in the manner of an explanation. The facts that they are discarded shoes of some rich boy, who perhaps refused to wear them because of a hole in one of them, doesn't bother him. For one who has walked barefoot, even shoes with a hole is a dream come true. But the game he is watching so intently is out of his reach.
This
morning, Saheb is on his way to the milk booth. In his hand is a steel
canister. “I now work in a tea stall down the road," he says, pointing
into the distance. I am paid 800 rupees and all my meals. Does he like the job?
I ask. His face, I see, has lost the carefree look. The steel canister seems
heavier than the plastic bag he would carry so lightly over his shoulder. The
bag was his. The canister belongs to the man who owns the tea shop. Saheb is
no longer his own master!
"I want to drive a car”
Mukesh insists on being his own master. "I will be a motor mechanic,” he announces.
"Do you know anything about cars?" I ask.
"I'll learn to drive a car," he answers, looking straight. into my eyes. His dream looms like a mirage amidst the dust of streets that fill his town Firozabad, famous for its bracelets. Every other family in Firozabad is engaged in making bangles. It is the center of India's glass-blowing industry where families have spent generations working around furnaces, welding glass, making bangles for all the women in the land it seems.
Lost Spring: Stories Of Stolen Childhood Translation In Hindi
Lost spring: Stories of Stolen Childhood Solution
Lost Spring: Stories of Stolen Childhood Summary
Mukesh's family is among them. None of them know that it is illegal for children like him to work in the glass furnaces with high temperatures, in dingy cells without air and light; that the law, if enforced, could get him and all those 20,000 children out of the hot furnaces where they slog their daylight hours, often losing the brightness of their eyes. Mukesh's eyes beam as he volunteers to take me home, which he proudly says is being rebuilt. We walk down stinking lanes choked with garbage, past homes that remain howls with crumbling walls, wobbly doors, no windows, crowded with families of humans and animals coexisting in a primeval state. He stops at the door of one such house, bangs a wobbly iron door with his foot, and pushes it open. We enter a half-built shack. In one part of it, thatched with dead grass, is a firewood stove over which sits a large vessel of sizzling spinach leaves. On the ground, in large aluminum platters, are more chopped vegetables. A frail young woman is cooking the evening meal for the whole family. through eyes filled with smoke she smiles. She is the wife of Mukesh's elder brother. Not much older in years, she has began to command respect as the daughter-in-law of the house, already in charge of three men- her husband, Mukesh and their father. When the old man enters, she gently withdraws behind the broken wall and brings her veil closer to her face. As custom demands, Daughters-in-law must veil their faces before male elders. In this case the elder is an impoverished bangle maker. Despite long years of hard labor, first as a tailor, then a bangle maker, he has failed to renovate a house, send his two sons to school. All he has managed to do is teach them what he knows- the art of making bangles.
“It is his karam, his destiny,” says Mukesh's grandmother, who has watched her own husband go blind with the dust from polishing the glass of bangles. “Can a God-given lineage ever be broken? she implies. Born in the caste of bangle makers, they have seen nothing but bangles - in the house, in the yard, in every other house, every other yard, every street in Firozabad. Spirals of bangles- sunny gold, paddy green, royal blue, pink, purple, every color born out of the seven colors of the rainbow-lie in mounds in unkempt yards, are piled on four-wheeled handcarts, pushed by young men along the narrow lanes To install the shanty town. And in dark hutments, next to lines of flames of flickering oil lamps, sit boys and girls with their fathers and mothers, welding pieces of colored glass into circles of bangles. Their eyes are more adjusted to the dark than to the light outside. That's why they often end up losing their eyesight before they become adults.
Savita, a young girl in a drab pink dress, sits beside an elderly woman, soldering pieces of glass. As her hands move mechanically like the tongs of a machine she knows the sanctity of the bangles she helps make. It symbolizes an Indian woman's suhaag, auspiciousness in marriage. It will dawn on her suddenly one day when her head is draped with a red veil, her hands dyed red with henna, and red bangles rolled onto her wrists. She will then become a bride. Like the old woman beside her who became one many years ago. She still has bangles on her wrist, but no light in her eyes. “Ek waqt ser bhar khana bhi nahi khaya”, she says, in a voice drained of joy. she has not enjoyed even one full meal in her entire lifetime- that's what she has reaped! Her husband, an old man with a flowing beard, says, “I know nothing except bangles. All I have done is make a house for the family to live in."
Hearing him, one wonders if he has achieved what many have failed in their lifetime. He has a roof over his head!
The cry of not having money to do anything except carry on the business of making bangles, not even enough to eat, rings in every home. The young men echo the lament of their elders. Little has moved with time, it seems in Firozabad. Years of mind-numbing toil have killed all initiative and the ability to dream.
“Why not organize yourselves into a cooperative?” I ask a group of young men who have fallen into the vicious circle of middlemen who trapped their fathers and forefathers. “Even if we get organized, we are the ones who will be hauled up by the police, beaten and dragged to jail for doing something illegal,” they say. there is no leader among them who could help them see things differently. Their fathers are as tired as they are. They talked endlessly in a spiral that moves from poverty to apathy to greed and to injustice.
Listening to them I see two distinct worlds- one of the family, caught in a web of poverty, burdened by the stigma of caste in which they are born; the other a vicious circle of the sahukars the middlemen, the policemen, the keepers of law, the bureaucrats and the politicians. Together they have imposed the baggage on the child that he cannot put down. Before he is aware, he accepts it as naturally as his father. to do anything else would mean to dare. And daring is not part of his growing up. When I sense a flash of it in Mukesh I am cheered. "I want to be a motor Mechanic,' he repeats. He will go to a garage and learn. But the garage is a long way from his home. "I'll walk," he insists. "Do you also dream of flying a plane?" He is suddenly silent. "No," he says, staring at the ground. In his small murmur there is an embarrassment that has not yet turned into regret. He is content to dream of cars that he sees hurtling down the streets of his town. Few airplanes fly over Firozabad.
Lost Spring: Stories Of Stolen Childhood Translation In Hindi
Lost spring: Stories of Stolen Childhood Solution
Lost Spring: Stories of Stolen Childhood Summary
Difficult Words Lost spring: Stories of Stolen Childhood
|
Aching दर्द करता हुआ |
Acquaintance जान-पहचान |
Amidst के बीच |
|
Announces जोर से बोलता है |
apathy उदासीनता |
auspiciousness शुभ होना |
|
baggage बोझ |
bangs ठोकर मारता है |
barefoot नंगे पैर |
|
beam चमकने लगती हैं |
bleak नीरस एवं निराशापूर्ण |
broadly खुलकर |
|
cells कोठरियाँ |
co-existing साथ-साथ रहते हुए |
content सन्तुष्ट |
|
cooperative सहकारिता |
dare चुनौती देना |
desolation खालीपन |
|
Destiny नियति, भाग्य |
Dingy गंदी एवं अन्धेरी |
Drab भद्दा, नीरस |
|
Drainage जमीन के अन्दर गंदे पानी आदि के पाइपों की व्यवस्था |
drained रहित |
draped लिपटा हुआ |
|
drowned डूबा हुआ |
dumps ढेर |
echo दोहराते हैं |
|
embarrassed असमंजस में |
embarrassment शर्मिंदगी। |
encounter मिलती हूँ |
|
excuse बहाना |
fine art ललित कला |
flames ज्वालाएँ |
|
flickering टिमटिमाते |
frail पतली-दुबली |
furnaces भट्टियाँ |
|
Garbage कूड़ा-कचरा |
glass-blowing काँच को आकार देना |
glibly लापरवाही के साथ |
|
half-joking थोड़े मजाक में |
hauled up घसीट ले जाये जायेंगे |
hollow खोखली |
|
hovels टूटी फूटी झोंपड़ियाँ |
hurtling down तेजी से दौड़ती हुई |
hutments झोंपड़ियाँ |
|
identity पहचान |
Illegal गैर-कानूनी। |
Implies अर्थ लगाती है |
|
impoverished कंगाल एवं शक्तिहीन |
initiative पहल करने की क्षमता |
Insists जोर देता है |
|
Lament विलाप |
lineage वंश-परम्परा |
looms अस्पष्ट |
|
metaphorically उपमा की दृष्टि से |
middlemen बिचौलिए |
mind-numbing चेतनाशून्य करने वाला |
|
mirage मृगमरीचिका |
mounds ढेर |
mutters अस्पष्ट बोलता है |
|
owned स्वामित्व रखा |
panting हाँफता हुआ |
periphery सीमा |
|
permits आज्ञा-पत्र |
perpetual स्थायी |
piled ढेर के रूप में |
|
pitch गाड़ देते हैं |
Priest पुजारी |
primeval आदिकालीन |
|
proportions आकार, कलेवर |
rag pickers कचरा इकट्ठा करने वाले |
renovate मरम्मत करना |
|
Rings सुनाई देता है |
roams भटकता है |
running water नलों से मिलने वाला पीने योग्य पानी |
|
sanctity पवित्रता |
scrounging खोजबीन करते हुए |
sewage गंदे पानी का निकास |
|
shanty झोपड़ियों से भरे |
shelf ताक |
shuffles इधर-उधर घसीटता है |
|
sizzling छन-छन की ध्वनि के साथ उबलता हुआ |
slog मेहनत करते हैं |
soldering टाँका लगाते हुए |
|
spirals घेरे |
squatters सार्वजनिक भूमि पर अवैध रूप से कब्जा कर रहने वाले |
stigma कलंक |
|
stinking बदबूदार |
structures झोंपड़ियाँ |
swept away बहा ले गये |
|
tattered फटी हुई, चिथड़ा |
thatched फूस का छप्पर |
toil मेहनत। |
|
tradition परम्परा |
transit अस्थायी |
trapped फँसा लिया |
|
universe विश्व |
unkempt बिना संवारे |
veil चूंघट |
|
vicious circle कुचक्र |
volunteers स्वेच्छा प्रकट करता है |
web जाल। |
|
welding जोड़ना |
wilderness उजाड़ |
wobbly डगमगाते हुए |
Lost Spring: Stories Of Stolen Childhood Translation In Hindi
Lost spring: Stories of Stolen Childhood Solution
Lost Spring: Stories of Stolen Childhood Summary
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