March 13, 2012
If you belong to a middle class, upper middle class or upwardly mobile middle class of the Indian society, chances are high that you have been part of conversations like these. It takes a dramatic form here because of my hangover from watching the drama fests recently.
The characters and events depicted here are, as usual, fictional except when real.
[A breezy Sunday afternoon. The second floor balcony of a middle class home. Mom and Dad, seated in cane and plastic chairs with newspapers spread out on their laps are in the middle of a conversation as the Son enters. Mom is peeling an orange]
Mom: [finishing a statement] ...so the MP's recommendation is required.
Son: The local MP's? recommendation for what?
Mom: You know that maid servant at couple of houses down the street. To put her daughter in the Charity Poor Home.
Son [incredulous]: To put someone in poor home, you need the Member of Parliament to recommend?
Dad: of course! Have you any idea how much the rush is...the local politician's words are not enough any more. You need it from someone from Delhi itself.
Son: There is a rush to put people in poor home? I can understand the rush to old age homes.
Mom [offers the son an orange segment]: Society is not safe, some girls are better off in the charity home than in their own homes.
Son [eating the orange]: Is that what is happening to her? I have seen that girl. Wasn't she in high school?
Mom: Yes. Very helpful kid. Studies well as well. But what to do when one has a father like this.
Son: Let me guess...drunkard, is he?
Dad: That would have been ok. I think it is a default status these days in those sections of the society.
Mom [offers another orange segment]: Drinking problem has been there for years. Now it has moved onto a different level. He comes home full drunk with other men and those men are trying to assault the mother and the girl.
Son [not knowing how to respond and refuses the orange segment]: hmmm
Mom [gives dad the orange segment]: She fears for the girls' future. What if all these men come when she is not at home and attack the girl?
Dad: And this is the girl's own father...
Son [shakes his head]: slipping into drunken pimping...
Mom: She should have just stuck a knife on that guy who got onto her bed.
Dad: And what will that achieve?
Mom: She will be safer in jails....
Son [laughs]: Yeah right!! Our jails are so known for their safe and caring environment...
[Mom and Dad smile in agreement about the abject condition of the jails]
Mom [thoughtfully]: may be this is all fate. This husband fellow had a wife and two kids earlier.
Dad: Really? I did think that he looked much older than her.
Mom: Yes. She broke that family up and married him when she was only 16. Now she is going through this. Her mother had cursed her at the time of this marriage itself that she will have to suffer the consequences for breaking up a family. Bad Karma.
Dad: What about her son? Isn't he old enough to protect the family from such drunkards?
Son: There is a son too?
Mom: That fellow already eloped with some girl, got married and moved away.
Son: This girl's older brother then? How old is he?
Mom: Hardly 21.
Dad: This is the life of the vast poor sections of the society.
Son: I think it is the same even in the richer segments. Things may not be as stark or as revealed.
Dad [folding the newspaper and getting into story telling mode]: I remember getting acquainted with a coffee seller in the Thrissur - Trivandrum train when I was commuting regularly during the weekends. You know, back in the late 90s. There used to be this horribly handicapped, dirty, beggar with stinking clothes and festering skin infections also a regular in that train. One day, that beggar brought all the coins and old notes he had collected through the day and spread it out on the train floor to get change for a coffee. Seeing this money that coffee seller told me, "Sir, look how much more he makes begging than I make by selling coffee in this train!" then he smiled and added, "but none of this money is going to be saved by him. There are enough women in these railway stations who would offer him services to get this money!"[Mom frowns and purses her lips in disgust]
Son: Anything to stay alive! Anything for the next meal!
Dad: Earlier Malayalam novelists like Keshava Dev and Pottakkad used to dwelve into such hard life. Nowadays literature is all about market and there is no market for such stories.
Son: Yes, the important use of art as social cathartic is long gone. We are having this conversation only because this is happening to people right in front of us, so to speak!
Mom: Anyways, tomorrow I am going with the other neighbors to talk to the poor home people and see if we can get the girl admitted there.
Son: Are you sure she is going to be safe in the Poor Home? [sarcastically] Afterall, it is our great politicians who are involved in its running.
Mom: No, it is a good place. There has never been any scandal or bad news from there.
Dad [adding]: No scandal so far...that's all we can say.
Son: Why doesn't anybody talk to the husband first? Can't he be warned?
Mom: Will you do it?
Son [smiles]: Of course not. You see, I have learnt well that I am better off worrying about poor, starving children in Africa than interfere with something right at my door step. I have globalized by irresponsibility like majority of my generation. So instead of this young girl... fearing for her safety... under threat from her own father... who is throwing away his life to alochol, I will worry about Uganda's Kony and whether the online campaign against him reeks of racism.
Dad: Do you want another orange?
Son: No, thanks. Lunch was quite filling.
Mom: Is there any good afternoon movie on TV today?
Son [taking the newspaper from her lap]: Let me check.
Dad [looking at his newspaper]: I will check in this.
[Mom's cellphone rings]Mom: Hello...yes yes..... of course...definitely I am going to do the 'pongala' for the goddess this year. I have been feeling so bad about not doing it last year.
[Lights Off]
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