On my way to Bhilwara from Pushkar, I was forced to wait for the train at Ajmer railway station. Well, I thought of getting my pair of shoes polished. A boy of about fourteen offered his service for a meagre Rs 2.This was something unusual as the normal rate in northern India for cream polish is Rs 4. Gleefully, I engaged him to work. The boy was more than serious in his work. Just to avoid the guilt of enagaging a child labour, I decided to start a dialogue. It was revealed that the boy belongs to somewhere close to Nasirabad; a small hamlet near Ajmer. His father abandoned the entire family probably after marrying his new paramour. His mother, with her three children struggles to survive in a nearby slum as she was driven out from their house by her in-laws. She works as a maidservant in a bureaucrats house. Her service is free. However, the babu was kind enough to allow her to take a few chapattis and surplus sabji for her children.
This shoeshine boy started working at the age of seven. Recently, his brother has joined him. Their only sister assists her mother in her work. None of them can read or write. This boy is not sure that he lives in a country called India or even Bharat! He, however, knows that there is a place called Delhi, “jahan neta log rahte hain”. He has a faint idea of his state like “Jaipur bahoot bara shahr hai, lekin Ajmer mein bhi bahoot log aate hai”.
Usually, he works from dawn to dusk and even after that “agar kamai aachcha nehi hua to”. On an average he earns Rs 20 a day. A Potential irritant for his business is the police constables on duty, whom he is forced to serve free of cost. The bureaucrat who employed her mother often compels him to get his (and of everyone in his family) shoes polished in exchange of biscuits or mithais. He would love to go back to his village but the family has no means of livelihood there.
This hapless future citizen of India has no time to go to school. He has to work 16 hours a day, 365 days a year. His idea of India is a railway platform where he offers his service at a lower rate just to survive at the end of the day and a bureaucrats house where he receives occasional mithai in lieu of polishing twenty-something pairs of shoes. The busy road construction activity all over Rajasthan, the brilliant oratory of Vajpayee at Jaipur, the inauguration of another engineering college at Bhilwara by the chief minister or the release of a new Hritik Roshan film do not carry any meaning to him.
While on train I glanced through the morning newspaper. It carried photographs of both Vajpayee and Rajasthan CM Gehlot – both agreed that His country & His state are making rapid strides towards greater glory. Also, it did not fail to mention that the tickets of new Hritik Roshan film were sold at a price of Rs 250 this Saturday.
August,2003
Bhilwara, Rajasthan
A Wanderer & his passing fancy 