Memory is a chimerical device. It takes a devious pleasure enticing and torturing the mind. I often think of memories as glimpses of the outside world seen from a speeding train. It leaves behind a plethora of half formed images, poignant in imagery but when reminisced, they seem as if from a spectral world of our self-conjured dreams. They are there but when you look closely, trying to dissect through their innards they vanish in a puff of smoke leaving behind an odor, that tantalizes you and at the same time forming a self-castigation for the futility of the entire effort. The more I start to peer behind those swirling clouds of confusing thoughts, the more pressed I become to question my own sanity. Every day forward erases the past by a bit. It’s as if all the laws of entropy have been vanquished by the forces ruling my mind and the perfect painting is peeling itself of those wonderful colors that once ensnared my mind, leaving behind a sketch that is a travesty of my memories. The pellucid waters are now a mire of confusion bereaving in the loss of their tranquility. The quintessential sense of the balance that my mind used to possess has become hoary and does not allow me to relax in its erstwhile comforting bosom. Reality has become an illusion and vice-versa. Sometimes I feel like I am floating outside my own self gloating in the chaos that preside the reality. Bewitching images from an illegible past mingled with grandiose visions of the future seem incongruous with the stark austerity of the present. I seem to be standing at the cross-roads where time has stuck and I can browse through past, present and future with equanimity and yet wonder when I am going to wake up. It seems that my spirit has detached itself from the travails besetting my beleaguered body and is reveling in this new formless and timeless existence that is beyond the scope of its own comprehension.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
A Tryst with Reality
Today we finally embarked on the task that I have been the most apprehensive of- interviews with the parents. The data that we had collected pointed to the fact that an overwhelming, if not a hundred percent majority of the parents were involved in professions that would barely provide for a hand to mouth existence. While the kids had taken to us with an ease that surprised us, I for one had misgivings about what would happen when we would step into their lives after school.
For privileged people like us, who have never had to worry about anything concerned with financial affairs, it was a sort of conundrum. Which questions to ask and how delicately could we put it through to them that we just wanted to know the environment surrounding the education of the child without sounding too nosy or obnoxious at the same time. But six hours after we met with the parents of Monalisa Nag of Class 6 of R.E.C Govt School, I have trouble shaking of the image of that small asbestos roofed house entrenched deeply in poverty and the parents who hope against hope to see their daughters making a place for themselves in society.
Popular culture and media have often fostered the general perception that somehow uneducated parents somehow do not care enough for their child’s education. Think again. The silent despair that we were faced with when we put forward the question to Monalisa’s mother, Devaki, a housemaid, almost abashed us. While she wants to be a part of her daughter’s education, it’s almost gut-wrenching to see the helpless inability to do so. The enthusiasm of the father, Chandrasekhar who earns only 3000-4000 per month as a driver at the thought of his daughter becoming computer literate is infectious. It is not the aspirations that they have of their children that separate them our parents. It is the impotency of poverty and illiteracy that prevents them from doing so.
It is not charity that they want. While economic emancipation for everyone is an utterly utopian idea, the least the Govt can do is spruce up the levels of education in the hundreds of thousands of primary schools. Just making schools and giving free mid-day meals is not enough. The education that they are getting should of the quality that it makes a change in their lives. The society that debates all these topics sitting in the comforts of their homes is even more at fault. Of which I have been an integral part of all my life. I write this with the hope that twenty years from now, if I perchance happen to read it again I would not be smothered by the guilt and shame that engulfs me now.
For privileged people like us, who have never had to worry about anything concerned with financial affairs, it was a sort of conundrum. Which questions to ask and how delicately could we put it through to them that we just wanted to know the environment surrounding the education of the child without sounding too nosy or obnoxious at the same time. But six hours after we met with the parents of Monalisa Nag of Class 6 of R.E.C Govt School, I have trouble shaking of the image of that small asbestos roofed house entrenched deeply in poverty and the parents who hope against hope to see their daughters making a place for themselves in society.
Popular culture and media have often fostered the general perception that somehow uneducated parents somehow do not care enough for their child’s education. Think again. The silent despair that we were faced with when we put forward the question to Monalisa’s mother, Devaki, a housemaid, almost abashed us. While she wants to be a part of her daughter’s education, it’s almost gut-wrenching to see the helpless inability to do so. The enthusiasm of the father, Chandrasekhar who earns only 3000-4000 per month as a driver at the thought of his daughter becoming computer literate is infectious. It is not the aspirations that they have of their children that separate them our parents. It is the impotency of poverty and illiteracy that prevents them from doing so.
It is not charity that they want. While economic emancipation for everyone is an utterly utopian idea, the least the Govt can do is spruce up the levels of education in the hundreds of thousands of primary schools. Just making schools and giving free mid-day meals is not enough. The education that they are getting should of the quality that it makes a change in their lives. The society that debates all these topics sitting in the comforts of their homes is even more at fault. Of which I have been an integral part of all my life. I write this with the hope that twenty years from now, if I perchance happen to read it again I would not be smothered by the guilt and shame that engulfs me now.
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