Two girls frolic on a summer’s evening, and while shadows slant grey in emerald fields, they revel in the golden taste of happiness, basking in the warm radiance of childhood, innocence and freedom.
Touch-me-nots, their blooms, the soft, sugar-embroidered pink of a happy ending, shrink from the kiss of grumbling yellow bees. Butterflies coyly flutter their emerald-tipped silver wings as if dispensing benedictions from a benevolent god. High up in the coconut trees, the crows squabble and gossip.
The taller girl, pigtails swaying in the fragranced breeze, closes her eyes and counts. The smaller girl hides among the copse of trees at the edge of the field as the lone cow, tail twitching, keeps watch and envelops her in its mildly curious, liquid mahogany gaze.
‘Here I come,’ shouts the seeker and she darts among the fields, her churidar ballooning around her.
The other girl peeks from behind the base of the mango tree as she breathes in the tart green smell of ripening mangoes, her hands attuning to the knobbly brown feel of bark.
‘Got you,’ the taller girl yells, coming up behind her, but the smaller girl screams as she slips on the moss at the base of the tree, her knee exploding in a spurt of red as she cuts it on a sharp-edged stone.
The taller girl holds the smaller one in her arms and gently wipes away the blood oozing through the torn churidar bottoms.
The cow strains at the rope that tethers it to the post and comes up to them, nudging their faces with its soft wet nose: the slimy feel of fish guts, the earthy tang of manure.
The girls laugh, syrup and sweetness, their angst forgotten, dispersed into the evening air that brings cooking smells wafting up to them. The cow bellows, a long, mournful moo.
‘Here,’ says the taller girl, rubbing at the blood that still sprouts in scarlet droplets from the wounded girl’s knee. ‘Let’s make a promise to love and look out for each other forever.’
The wounded girl hesitates for one protracted beat during which the other girl’s smile slips.
Then, she too dips her pinkie finger in the blood and ignoring the summons to dinner that carry over the gurgling of the stream, and drift across the fields, they link their fingers together and recite, ‘We will always look out for each other and love each other best.’
In my fevered dreams, in this peculiar half-awake state, I see myself writing the letter.
The seemingly innocuous wad of papers penned in meticulous joined-up letters, in my best handwriting, and my mother’s voice echoing in my ears: ‘Remember, for some people, your handwriting is their first, and perhaps only, introduction to you.’ My brain fired up, vivid images of amber flames dancing in front of my eyes, my ink-marked fingers working zealously.
Now, my agitated mind whispers a warning from the confines of this strange bed in which I find myself strapped; medicinal sheets swaddle me in a claustrophobic embrace, as I watch my younger, naive self making copies, penning addresses, sealing envelopes.
I am unable to do any more than gag on the bitter taste of glue, damp paper and remonstrance, my hollow stomach dipping, knowing that it is done and in the past. My words posted and in the relevant hands, set into action events which will culminate in the here and now: this delirious state; this bizarre prison.
The letter then:
To: The Chief Minister of Karnataka
CC: The Minister for Higher Education; The Minister for Law, Justice and Human Rights.
Dear Sirs,
My name is Kushi Shankar. I am seventeen years old and a resident of Bhoomihalli village. I am writing this letter to you because, in my opinion, even though you have been elected to represent the people of this state and have pledged to do your best by them, you sometimes forget how they, i.e. we, the common people, live.
Mr Chief Minister, I know that you grew up in the city, started your political career there and now reside there in a huge mansion in the poshest part of the city. I am not faulting you for this. I just wonder if you know what it is really like for the people in the villages, that’s all. The people you are supposed to protect and look after, whose concerns, you assure us, are your priority.
Well, we don’t feel that way here in Bhoomihalli and I am sure this is the case in other villages as well. We feel let down, disillusioned. You promise us all these things so we vote for you: clean roads, drinking water, medical facilities, a good education and then you renege on these promises as soon as you are elected. Is this fair?
Why do we have to suffer power cuts every single evening and through the night while your city mansions have electricity day in and day out? Why do we still not have the medical facility that has been promised us by every politician before every election since my father was a boy, and have to travel to Dhoompur to get medical help and medicines? Why do we have to queue for hours at the one communal tap every summer when our wells dry up, for water the colour of sludge that comes for one hour each day, at different and entirely random times? Where are the borewells you have promised us? Where is the clean, running water?
All of these concerns I have raised here are important, of course, but they are not the real reason I am writing to you. I have a specific purpose in writing this letter, which I will tell you about in a minute. But mostly, this letter is a plea, showing you how it is for us and asking you to please do something.
Now, I am going to present to you a scenario.
Picture this:
The Engineering College on the outskirts of Dhoompur. The one with the imposing gate and the leafy, tree-lined drive leading up to the formidable two-storey building, with its cement roof and its tall gables; with its chattering, confident students who wear their sense of entitlement like an extra set of clothes. The one whose glossy prospectus promises 100% placement at the end of the four-year course, a white-collar job guaranteed.
Every child in Bhoomihalli and the neighbouring villages seeks admission into the hallowed portals of this college, dreaming of being one of the revered students with their poise and their absolute belief in a sunny future. The parents of Bhoomihalli’s aspiring children are farm labourers who work so very hard to make sure their kids get the education they themselves were denied, which is why they perform back-breaking labour in other men’s fields for little return.
These farmers would like their children to be officers, to wear shirts and trousers, not lungis and holey vests. They would like their children to carry briefcases spilling over with documents—which they, mere labourers, cannot read—and not bricks and rubble, or yokes and bales of hay. They would like their children to have an upright bearing, not a back permanently bent with lugging the cares of the world. They would like their children’s skin to be pampered and soothed by the air-conditioned interior of offices, not burnt to a crisp by the unforgiving sun.
They would like their children to speak the English of the educated, not the Kannada and Tulu of the masses. They would like their children to have soft, well-fed bellies sagging contentedly over their belts, not concave stomachs that ache with hunger and struggle to hold up lungis like their own.
They would like their children to eat meat at least three times a week, not once every few months when the cow that was their livelihood finally gives up on life and has to be butchered, the paltry, stringy meat clinging to the bones tasting of worry. For how will they replace Nandini, who was so very loyal and gave milk every single day even though she lived only on a diet of scorched, yellow grass?
And the villagers can conceive of only one way that their children can have all of this, and that is through education, that magic word that promises entry into the echelons of the rich and the well settled.
At the local school which the children of these labourers attend, the teachers change like the weather, they appear and disappear like apparitions, like gods who every once in a while give a darshan to favoured supplicants. When the teachers disappear—they are not paid enough, they say, and go to the cities in search of better recompense and the big break they know is their due—there is no choice but to club two or three classes together, no matter the pupils’ ages. These range from eleven to fifteen, with some of the older children stepping in to teach the younger ones. Is it any matter then that there is such a disparate success rate between schools in the city and those in the villages?
The teachers who do stay more than a month or two all recite the same mantra, unintentionally echoing the message that is drilled into the village children by their parents so many times that they know it by heart: Study hard, bag a seat at the Engineering College, get out of here.
And so, the children of the labourers study and their parents work extra-long hours to procure the requisite textbooks. As the exams loom, the villagers forgo meals for a week or two to send their children for tuition in Dhoompur, to centres that claim ‘Sure-fire Success in Pre-University and CET Exams’.
And these village kids, who lack textbooks and teachers and classroom space, pass the exams with flying colours, their high ranks in the CET assured to win them entry into the Engineering College. They are invited to the city to choose their seat, their shiny, assured future gleaming tantalisingly before them.
On paper, of course, that is what is supposed to happen.
But does it?
Now my ma says that it was a different system while she was growing up. In those days you chose the schools you wanted by post. You sent off the form and either you were offered a place or you weren’t. So, the travesty I am about to narrate was much easier to execute then and not as transparent, you see.
Anyway, the surprising thing is that my ma, yes, you heard right, was offered a place to study medicine at Hosahanapur College! This is because she won the first rank in the entire state and the education board couldn’t in all honestly refuse her a place at the college of her choice. She, after all, had first claim on any or all of the seats. If they had refused, it would have caused too big a furore to sweep under their scandal-studded carpet.
Now, back to my scenario. To make this easier, I am going to narrate it from the point of view of Somu, the boy who scored the top marks in the entire village last year.
Somu and his da arrive in the city to choose a place at the Engineering College. Somu shakes the grime off his clothes as best he can, and pats his hair down using the dust-smeared, cracked glass of the groaning, overstuffed city bus window as a mirror, as he and his da journey to the interview hall. His father stands beside him, too close due to the press of commuters. Both of them are uncomfortable in the shiny new clothes purchased for this day from money obtained by emptying the rainy day fund. Somu’s father is desperately missing his lungi and tries to discreetly adjust his crotch which feels confined and trapped inside the unfamiliar trousers.
Once in the vicinity of the interview hall, they join the queue of hopeful students snaking all the way to the end of the road and beyond.
Somu eyes the other applicants, every one of them effortlessly self-assured and better dressed than him. Despite his new clothes, Somu thinks he looks out of place and all wrong here in the city. His heart flares with the hope he hasn’t dared give voice to until now, convincing him that when he exits this building, the proud owner of an engineering seat, he’ll be well on his way to becoming one of them, these confident city boys. He hopes that in time, some of their poise, their sense of purpose will rub off on him, bestowing him with the ability to choose the right clothes, look like he belongs.
And then, it is Somu’s turn to go inside, and he forgets everything else as he concentrates on what he has to do, this important step that will secure for him a future as bright and promising as every one of the people he has seen and envied outside.
There are big electronic boards displaying the number of seats available and the building is air-conditioned no less!
Ah, this is the life, Somu’s da thinks, feeling the cool air soothe the itch in his crotch, his mind racing ahead to a future where his son has a house, complete with air-conditioning, in the centre of the city where they will all reside in luxury.
Do Da and I stand out? Somu worries. Do I smell? He sweats more when he is nervous.
The board says eleven seats available in Electronic Engineering, which is the discipline Somu aims to pursue at the Dhoompur Engineering College. He does a quick assessment. There are ten students ahead of him. Even if all ten of them choose the same discipline in the same college, he will get the seat.
The person in front of the queue chooses and the board changes the display. Somu blinks, waits a beat and blinks again. He’s seeing things surely? Only one person has chosen and the number of seats available has gone down to seven.
He looks at the other disciplines offered by Dhoompur Engineering College and quickly makes up his mind. Even if he doesn’t get Electronics, he can choose Electrical (eight seats available) or even Mechanical (ten seats). All good disciplines with guaranteed jobs. He’s not worried. He has plenty of leeway. And then, there are four people ahead and no seats in Electronics, one in Electrical and only three left in Mechanical.
How did this happen?
‘Please, Lord Ganapathy,’ he entreats, seeking comfort from a god, who until now he had prayed to by rote and only at his mother’s insistence. He looks at his da, pulling at the collar of his shirt as if it is strangling him. His da is clearly itchy in these unfamiliar clothes and is waiting eagerly to change into his regular uniform of vest and lungi. He grins at Somu and squeezes his hand. He doesn’t have a clue, being unable to read. But then, Somu can read and he doesn’t understand either.
What on earth is going on here?
By the time he gets to choose there are no seats left in Electronics Engineering, or Electrical or even Mechanical. There is one seat available in Civil Engineering and he goes to choose it, but before he does, that too disappears, and with the board making that whirring noise like a frenzied bee, the ‘1’ changes right before his blurry eyes and sinking heart to zero.
What is he going to do? How did this happen?
His father goes to clap him on the back, and then seeing Somu’s face, does not say a word. Silently he leads his dejected son outside.
There are seats available in other colleges of course, but they are too far away and how is Somu going to get there, and afford the cost of staying in a hostel? At least at Dhoompur College, he would have been a day student, travelling to and from the college every day and helping his father out in the fields in the evenings.
Somu’s da tries to look upbeat for the sake of his son but it is hard to keep a smile fixed on his face. His grin wavers, yearning to be upended, his lips tilting down at the corners of his mouth. Somu was their family’s only chance out of poverty; he was banking on him.
Father and son barely register the crush in the bus back to the bus station, side by side, but not speaking. The prickly new clothes stick to their backs from the heat, and they try not to think of the hopes and the excitement they had carried inside them as the bus was traversing this same route only going the other way. The buildings which had seemed so full of promise and possibility, the confident people, all seem to mock them, for daring to presume they could be one of them, that they could belong here. They are, and always will be, outsiders.
And thus, they make their way back to the village, their disillusionment trailing behind them like an out-of-favour pet, their lost hopes haunting them like a ghost. The Ghost of Daring to Dream Too Big.
Somu is still on the waiting list for Dhoompur Engineering College but he doesn’t hold out much hope. What is the point?
From now on, he will regard hope as his enemy, he will retreat from anticipation, he will stay clear of joyful fantasies, and he will be deeply suspicious of happy endings. He will be a farmer like his father, and he will cry as he trudges up and down urging the bullocks on through the dry, drought-cracked land that will never be his, and his anger will burn in his chest like the relentless heat from the sun’s orb beating down on his head. For he has done his research, he has solved the Mystery of the Lost Seats. He knows why no child of the village, no matter how bright, has ever crossed through the imposing gates of the Engineering College and made it to the other side.
The Lost Seats are not lost, you see, but absorbed into the system, bought by people like you, sirs, ministers and lawyers, politicians and doctors, people rich enough to grease palms and purchase their children’s way into futures denied the children of the villages.
So, here is the truth. The only people assured good futures are those who have enough money to buy their way in. Their children will go to the Engineering College and they will not study. They will drink alcohol and play truant and when the principal dares suspend them, they will go on strike. They will shut the college down. They will demand less hours of study and more breaks. Their influential parents will lean on the local police and politicians who in turn will lean on the principal, and he will give in like he always does. And in a few years, even though these students have failed every exam ever set, they will pass the final exam of the final year with distinction, newly minted engineers who will go on to build multi-storied buildings on foundations as weak and unstable as theirs, that will collapse after a few years killing the throngs of families living within. But will they be held accountable? Will they lose their jobs?
What do you think?
They will go on to other jobs where they will once again buy their way into the echelons of power and create figureheads like you, Chief Minister, and they will run our state and our country through you.
Didn’t you start your career as a civil engineer, Mr. Minister for Justice, Law and Human Rights? Weren’t you one of the engineers involved in the construction of that bridge near Mangalore which collapsed, killing one hundred and fifty people, seventy of them children travelling in a school bus?
You might say: ‘Kushi, you are but seventeen years old, how do you know all this? Why are you making up these things? On whose authority are you spouting these tall tales?’
Ah, that brings me to the painful subject here—to the real reason I am writing this letter. That brings me to my father. He told me all of this.
My da taught in the village school all these years, but then he was promoted to the Engineering College in Dhoompur and his disenchantment began.
My da was perfectly happy teaching here in the village. He did not want to go to the Engineering College, be another of those teachers who abandon the village children for better pastures. He dithered and dallied. But then he thought that if he did teach at the Engineering College, he might be able to get some of the village students in. He was puzzled as to why they were not getting the seats they deserved. You see, none of us knew the true extent of the scam then. So, finally, he decided to take up the offer.
It was the worst decision of his life.
He soon discovered where all the ‘lost’ seats were going. He was going to do something about it but before he could, the horror I am about to narrate happened:
My da was the one who suspended that student, that influential politician’s son (I am sure you know who I am speaking about). Da was summoned to the principal’s office and was told in no uncertain terms not to suspend anyone again, no matter how provoking the circumstances. My father refused. His students misbehaved and he suspended them, not caring how powerful their parents were. And so, the students went on strike. And not content with just that, they went on a spree of destruction. They set fire to the library.
Now, my father loved books more than anything else, a love he has passed on to me, and he couldn’t bear the wilful destruction of these tomes his pupils in the village school would have given anything to be able to have access to.
I picture my da in that library—the swirling saffron flames, the blanket of smoke—his eyes stinging and his breath being squeezed out of his chest by the acrid fumes, as he ushers the students out, saving all of them. And then . . . the crisp, scorched yellow smell of pain, the ravenous flames voraciously licking at his legs, depositing their blistering caresses as they travel up his body amidst the devastation of burning pages—distorted spines, cream pages shrivelling; all the knowledge contained in those black squiggles on white leaves disintegrating into wispy grey ash—and finding the next breath, a lungful of clean white air is suddenly a matter of life or death . . .
Did da regret going into that building? Did he exhale his last breath, choked out by smoke, thinking of us? Did he hurt? I try to will these pictures away, these horrible visions of my father’s last moments that hijack my dreams and dog my waking moments.
I try.
My father’s killers haven’t been punished. They have not even spent a day in jail. I am sure they didn’t mean to murder anyone; they were vandalising public property, that is all. Property that is public for the likes of them but not for the village children. They caused thousands of rupees worth of damage. Money that could have fed our entire village for weeks.
As I write this, these arsonists are sailing through the corridors of Dhoompur Engineering College, not attending lessons, not taking notes, confident in the knowledge (the only knowledge they have amassed so far in the course of their education) that they will pass their exams with distinction. They have not paid for what they did, for robbing me of my father and our village of a great teacher and provider.
That is all I have to say.
Kushi
PS: I know you may not do anything about this letter, you might dismiss it as the ranting of a schoolgirl, if you read it at all. Well, I am tired of feeling useless, tired of feeling like my hands are tied. I am sending a copy of this letter to the editors at the Deccan Herald, The Hindu and the Times of India.
A year since my da passed. Six months since I wrote that letter.
I stand at the window of the sari shop in Dhoompur, our nearest town, and wait for a signal from Asha within.
Shapely, bindi-sporting mannequins, draped in turquoise, red and gold, grin at me from the cloudy glass window—a dingy shade of weary grey—smudged by a thousand handprints.
A year on and I miss Da so much every single day. His loss is a constant and unappeased ache in my chest. Ma has been my saving grace, my strength. And there have been my causes, of course. They have given me purpose. Campaigning to get the people living in slums moved into accommodation with walls and a roof never mind that it is mud walls and a thatch roof, (anything is an improvement on flimsy tarpaulin), is one of them.
That letter I wrote. It was published in all the newspapers. And it changed things.
The ministers finally made a pretence of seeming interested. They visited Bhoomihalli and met with me. That picture of me shaking hands with the Chief Minister, the letter held up in his other hand, made the news, along with a picture of him stooped in the entrance of Guru’s hut, designed to endear the Chief Minister to the masses and undo, to some extent, the damage my letter had done to his credibility.
The Chief Minister promised that the system of seats allocated for entry to the Engineering Colleges would henceforth be based on merit only. And they have stuck to that principle, more or less, during the recent seat allocations, not least because journalists have been waiting outside the seating allocation hall, and interviewing students going in and out, who have dutifully reported any discrepancies.
Many of the village students have gained entry into the Engineering College, and what pleases me the most is that Somu was offered a seat at Dhoompur Engineering College to study Electronics Engineering. The picture taken of the Chief Minister with Somu and his family: his mother, two sisters, and his grinning father, unrecognisable in a shirt and trousers, clicked at the unfortunate moment when Somu’s father was trying to adjust his crotch, made the news too, the proudest moment so far in the history of Somu’s family.
‘There will be many proud moments to celebrate from now on,’ Somu’s father said, beaming at Somu, when they came to thank me with a gift of their biggest marrow, coaxed from the cracked red soil on the tiny patch of land adjoining their hut.
There have been other changes. The arsonists who caused my da’s death have been expelled and barred from studying engineering, even though their parents, who must be very high up in the influential chain—the ones funding all the politicians—tried hard to avoid this happening, and lobbied to have them moved to a different college in the city. I still feel they’ve escaped lightly. I think they should have served a sentence, or been cautioned at the very least. Ma says their punishment is having to live with the unavoidable fact that their actions took Da’s life.
Bhoomihalli now sports two borewells (although they are not nearly enough, especially now that we are suffering a drought—I have been campaigning for more), a medical store an. . .
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