Well, today I was travelling in train and as you probably know in India many hawkers and beggars could be seen in your train journey as free or improvised entertainment services, and sometimes the hawkers do actually come in handy but the Beggars Never .
Today, I encountered such dramatic experience that I think has had gone too far. I was sitting (not quite sitting you know the word ‘Improvise’ ) in general compartment.
When at Bolpur (Santiniketan) Station some kids got in. One girl probably 7 years old holding an infant child in one hand and some musical pebbles at other with the company of her another brother who is no more than 5 years in this planet.
They started their act (or not) as such, the infant child was crying helplessly, I looked into its eyes, it was heart-breaking sadness, and his elder sister was consoling him saying things like “Don’t cry baby, mamma is just there you see.. Don’t cry mamma is there..” (and pointing fingers accordingly ) with no absolute sign of their Mamma or Whomsoever she is.
The passengers can easily understand that who ever their Mother is, Is Either Dead or worse happened to her. And that leaves these kids totally insecure.
The act started growling, the young brother brought a toy with him. A fluffy rubbery plastic bird shaped toy with a hit sensor-ed dancing light mechanism in it.
He was hitting that toy on passenger seats and the light was twinkling and that made that infant child smile for a while. Then he put the head of that toy inside his mouth, chewing on it.
The sister took the toy from his brother and gave it to the infant and he also put it in his mouth the head of the bird was working like a nipple.
All this going on and the sister was repeatedly saying “mamma is there..mamma is here..” The brother was holding an empty stainless steel glass at other hand often biting and stretching the edges with hands and was giving creepy smiles frequently.
I was watching or rather observing this with rapt attention with both my hands resting on my lap. When Suddenly, the boy held the glass in front of me, actually touching my hands with it.
It was the time when you put some coins in that glass overwhelmed by emotions thinking about those unfortunate kids and how they’ll survive this cruel world!
I looked into his eyes and said No, I could’ve given them one rupee or two but that would have been gone in vain. Because Whosoever has sent them into this business actually wants this to happen.
The child started crying again, and nothing could stop it. I asked the sister to take him home . She didn’t answer.
They don’t even know counting to hundred, yet they were collecting money trading on human emotions risking their lives, their future, everything .
They can get mid-day meal in any government primary school, if they are orphan then enormous clubs are there in Bolpur who would happily help them.
At the age when you are supposed to play childish games with friends, some people have thrown them in the gutter of the society. And instead learning counting to hundred they learned even more mature element of life – Lying .
Some people gave them some coins and they went to the next section repeating the same act recursively .
The image is only for representation purpose and of not the ones mentioned in here.
That newborn came to our world only months ago, and just how did we Welcome him!??
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In a progressive society also, there could be extreme measures taken to ensure none can take ownership of the commodity called Wife after a man’s death as not a long time ago this country itself was suffering from Satidah. And the freakish thing about it was at that time it was socially justified and was morally acceptable as well, logics were inferred that if you take an oath to be a partner in life and death and life after death then its only romantic for you to die when your partner dies. Now this is quite unthinkable right now but back in the day if some woman thought it so then she would have been criticised by the society. This gives us the insight that Our moraliy and ethics should not be static or firm beliefs they should be challenged whenever our perception changes or grows. The mediaeval customs are mostly perished but still the relics of patriarchy remains. One can argue a person should only go with a partner who believes in same ethics as he or she does but that leaves out a question for us, what if this acceptance of a dominant symbolism is just as wrong as accepting Satidah in their respective timelines? What if some certain man a century ago was so ahead oh his time that he accepted marrying a widow without any second thought but the society around them cursed them for it. The society has no place in their decision making but it can sure smash a newer thought to dust and thus unnecessarily slow down the path of progression. For all I could say we need to accept the other person in our lives as a complete different person altogether, in that we respect their individuality and unique personality. I can fall in love with a woman for all the reasons there is and for all the reasons there isn’t but what if suddenly she says, she won’t be displaying relics of patriarchy by wearing vermillion on her neatly parted hair that her mother told her to maintain since adolescence? Shall I forget all the love I have for that woman upon hearing this and declare it a deadend for our relationship? Or should I make her believe that for sake of social acceptance and my inner cowardice of not being able to fight the social norms for better, she should wear it even after she found a profound reason not to do that? Or should I use the old trick of forcing her to do it for Love or should I use my ego and peer support to logically or forcibly brainwash her mind in a process of questionable enlightenment so that she would submit to acceptance of it herself and would feel guilty of thinking as such? This lives me with one diring question of what would I have done if I was born two centuries ago in the age of Satidah
Pritam Mondal 