A Labour’s Unknown Face

The Sun was out there waiting for me and as usual I was tossing from one side to the other on my bed. My dear partner wanted me to write on 'Child Labour' and I was just giving this topic a thought when... call it a coincidence, my cell phone remixed the regular beep and I was more than sure that Aaishwari must have messaged me reminding me about the write up, but to my extreme surprise, the sender’s name was displayed as 'Awareness' and it was in two parts. It went like:
Ban on engaging child as Domestic Servant or Servant in Hotel, Tea Shops, Dhabas, Eating Houses, SPA’s etc. (contd.)
Request you not to employ child below 14 years and help us make our State Child Labour Free –Commissioner of Labour,
State of Maharashtra.

I was just thinking about those mornings, which used to be relatively free. Being too lazy to cook something, I always landed up at the eating joints a block away. There is this joint which only served South Indian food along with added colours of ‘Gulab Jamuns’. When I moved to Kharghar, New Bombay, I wasn’t really keen on South Indian food. A year passed and when I settled more into the environment, I started observing things. my observation included everything, the food, utensils, tables and the chairs, and most important of all, the never fading smile on the faces working there. The only difference there was about the faces, the faces were all of boys who were under 14 and take my words, they were cute.

I didn’t even realize when I became so fond of them that the South Indian served in that joint became the only means on which I could survive. I would bank on every opportunity to rush there and see the daily happenings with a 'glass of coffee' in front of me. I would just watch them as they moved fast in between tables carrying the plates and the glasses as it was relatively a smaller place and most of the time it used to get so crowded that there were queues of would-be-eaters.

I became a familiar face out there. And as soon as I stepped in that place, all four of the boys would gather around me and with just a few exchanges of smiles they knew what I was going to order for food. Venkateshwar (one of them) would yell at Anna, “Ek mas-ss-aa-l-aa, ek ch-aa-i”. Sometimes when I used to ditch him with guesses, I would order ‘Uttapa’ and then he would yell “Mas-ss-aa-l-aa can-cel, ek Utt-a-pp-aa”. Then, if I was alone (that never happened), and if they were free as well (that also never happened), they will come up to the table where I generally sat and start a conversation.

There was this guy, who wore a T-shirt which was supposed to be of Ryan International School but only if he could know the meaning of the scrambled words written on his T-Shirt. I always found him cutest of the lot. He would come up to me and tell me tales about his days, and I would be no one than an active listener. He would tell about the girls he liked in my society, about the ‘off for a day’ he recently got but his favorite topic was to talk about my cell phone endlessly. Sometimes it would have been the Wallpaper or the ring tone or the sms tone, but he really liked them all. He would go out, click some good pictures and return the cell to me and then kept on reliving the memory till I give him my cell for the next time.

Way back in 1979, Government formed the first committee called Gurupadswamy Committee to study the issue of child labour and to suggest measures to tackle it. It observed that as long as poverty continued, it would be difficult to totally eliminate child labour and hence, any attempt to abolish it through legal recourse would not be a practical proposition. The Committee felt that in the circumstances, the only alternative left was to ban child labour in hazardous areas and to regulate and ameliorate the conditions of work in other areas. It recommended that a multiple policy approach was required in dealing with the problems of working children.

These are all words, written in black and white, I would rather go for the untold stories which he wanted to tell me, they sound much much sweeter and I am more than happy to listen to him every time. Even in my busiest of schedules I would try anything just to take out time and hang out there. Ch-aa-i after ch-aa-i, coffee after coffee, I started spending my holidays at that place, though I did not get much of holidays but I always made sure that 5 on 7 days a week, I land up there for dinner and I was always welcomed with a smile on those four faces, as if I was the remedy to their tiredness. Again the same miraculous tone and the yell ““Ek mas-ss-aa-l-aa, ek ch-aa-i”.

“The shackles are there on the body,
Dreams can never be tamed
The sky up above and the horizon unknown,
His wings can claim
The tears roll down and dry
With indifference in name
The murmur rises and dies
But it’s all in a game.”

Writing Credits: Piyush Singh
Editing Credits: Aaishwari Chouhan
Image Courtsey: http://www.catholicsocialjustice.org/