Exploring the Ordinary.

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*this incident is a fictional extension of what I observed one day looking out of a bus window*

4:30 am : She wakes not from her sleep but from her dream. Her eyes are moist and dark. Putting her arm beneath her head , she levels it perfectly so as to a  make a little cushion out of her skinny hands. The sky above her face reflects the ground below her body. From the half-opened eyes , she sees a car or two breeze past her. "In a while there will be hundreds of them" she thinks.

5:00 am : Sarita's mother has waken up. In fact she woke up just 10 minutes after Sarita had closed her half-opened eyes to extract 20 minutes of sleep. Her father and two brothers are still asleep but they will get up with another blow of horn or screech of breaks. The ground on which they lay is a raised platform, sidebarred with rusted railings , covered with thousand other blankets spread in multiple rectangles which helps demarcate one family's portion of area  in the night to other family's portion.

6:00 am : Sarita , her younger brother Rohit and their mother have made two hundred garlands. Yes ,those six hands worked more like sixty today. Her father and and her elder brother have put some of those garlands in a paper bag. They would be taking it to sector - 15 , the posh area in the city where few families want fresh garlands everyday. Sarita's elder brother specifically liked delivering to the Aggarwal's mansion because once or twice they had given him a worn out T-shirt and even asked for water. He thought that it was better than other houses who just slammed doors in his face. The other day they even let Rohit play on the swings for a while. They even offered to let him play everyday. But Rohit's elder brother simply declined the offer, saying "we cannot come everyday, sir."

9:00 pm : They had made good sales today. Sarita's mother did not rest her heel for a minute. As of Sarita's father and her elder brother, they had gone to that hardware store to return the balance and pay the rent on it accrued for 7 months. Sarita's mother and father came with no securities except for their children. But here they were able to make one ; put Sarita in a nearby school. Rohit was only six and the eldest one was 15. Whether it was calculating the balance from each transaction or making the garlands in perfect symmetry, Sarita showed better mathematical acumen than her brothers.

11:00 pm : The fellow street-sleepers looked at Sarita's family with envy and that feeling of longing to be at their position. Its not that the others did not work hard. Its just that they did not think of progressing the way Sarita and her family did.

Now, if you are wondering what is basically happening and where am I trying to take you then wait. Sarita, just another girl living on pavement, was admitted to a government school. She is good at academics. You sympathize with Sarita, right? You want her to achieve something substantial from her life. But if I tell you that her education is funded by government not only for her merit but also because of the caste she carries, then?
Does your perspective flicker when you know this piece of news? Do you judge or will you judge her or for that matter anyone who gets help from the government? Mine does.
My perspective towards Sarita's education changed when I got to know that the ladies of her house used to clean shit of higher caste people. They used to mix loads of burnt ash with higher one's fecal matter and carry it on their heads in a wood carved basket. And guess what there's even a term in Hindi used to denote these people: "Sar pe Maila Dhone Wale". The men of her house swept streets, to make them comfortable to walk and beautiful to see. But soon the invention of flush system reached villages and slowly this "occupation" ceased. These people then took to working as servants and maids in houses of the rich and learnt how useful education could be.

After the sad dawn which had embarked upon Sarita's father that he doesn't have money to cook food and shelter themselves, education being the distant dream, he figured out that government supports people of his, for the lack of a better word, caste.

We all know the grudges which followed the reservation, solely being the product of politician's brainchild: Votebank. I am not advocating for the present reservation regime. I am just putting the views of Sarita who must have felt the burn inside when the stereotypical society laughed on her ancestors. The ember in them scares me inside. I know what Ambedkar advocated was not wrong but the shape this "upliftment" regime has taken is a lot messier now.

I believe  that to get out of this messier picture and politics on reservation we need a step that will balance the arguments of both the sides. I think that if the authorities with consensus of the all the people put forward the notion that reservation regime will start again but will definitely stop when 3 or 4 or n number of consecutive generations have taken the benefit of reservation policy. There ought to be a time constraint for this kind of benefit.  This will ensure satisfaction in the minds of people who will not get this benefit of reservation and ample amount of chances for these people. Although, all this you might be wondering about one constant and factor, yeah the Politicians. Actually we have always made suggestions and policies considering Politicians to be constant. So, this is simply a blog where I can just hope that perspectives are listened and conveyed, if not changed.

2 comments:

  1. Too good. The way it is framed is beautiful👍

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fabulous! Yearn to hear u some more.....,

    ReplyDelete

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