A typical scene in suburban Mumbai, captured by my blogger friend Magiceye. A young girl, possibly, temporarily the head of a family, taking over the childcare, shopping and household work, lugging kerosene cans to the Ration shop, while her parents, are off to work, possibly at a new construction site.
Rampant construction in Mumbai has resulted in bringing in cheap labour from the rural areas, and entire families have moved. In the meanwhile, in rural areas near Satara, in Maharashtra, and some places in Bihar, young girls who were pressed for time attending rural schools miles away while doing their household duties, are being given free bicycles under some schemes and encouraged to attend school.
You win some. You lose sum. And some simply bypass a childhood, wistfully watching, what could have been .....
Life is
about choosing
between a fourth wall
and
a ceiling,
or
a crying baby sibling
and making chapati dough,
while your parents work overtime
at a posh
contsruction project.
Life is about
a childhood
accelerated into puberty,
as she stays home
to cook,
clean,
wash clothes,
queue up for kerosene,
ignore fights,
and look after
her brother,
the star member.
While her girlfriends
in her village
now get free cycles
to attend the school
5 kilometres away,
she trudges by,
school-less,
carrying the young brother
through the potholes of life
so one day,
he too can cycle by
like this,
in style....
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