Some things are beautiful
Only when they’re distant
Like a bee sitting on a flower
Humming a song
Or a radiant sunshine
Constricting your brown pupils
Some love you yearn for
Are too, riveting from distance
The closer love gets to you
You get off the deep end.

As I sit with a cup of tea on my balcony, I realize it’s my favourite time of the year. With my birthday and Diwali approaching I could sense the festivity in the air, except that this air isn’t something I’m familiar with. I’m habitual of a much higher frequency oscillating in the air, the frequency of the enchanting music playing in durga pandaals in every nook. That’s the difference between a metropolitan and a town. The euphony fades in the noisy, busy city. But it persists in a town in different forms.

An old weighing scale, probably rusted; a mat; notebooks and pencil: That’s what she carries everyday when she leaves home for school at 8 in the morning. As the school bell rings at 2 in the afternoon, all the kids run towards the gate barging each other. She is calm. She wouldn’t run. She has a brunt on her shoulder; not of the weighing scale but of her siblings, her senescent mother. So she can’t afford even a single scratch on the scale lest she falls. She marches to the same spot she’s been sitting on for last 4 months, earning whatever she could with that old machine. She sits on the mat she brings with her and keeps the weighing scale in front of her. Her elder brother sells balloons. At 9 in the night he picks her up and both of them return home.

“When people fall into servitude, so long as they cling to their language, it is as they held the key to their prison.” I remember the quote from the story, ’The last lesson’ by Alphonse Daudet from my class 12th English textbook. It says, the only nexus that binds the people together when they’re slaves to a colony is their language. I relate to it as I’ve gone through the Indian history texts- slogans by our leaders, writings by Indian authors have remained the subjects of our study. From freedom fighters to our Prime Minister, everyone has been trying to endorse our native language, Hindi, to bind the country and to use it as an antidote against any external threat.

We’ve seen sellers fighting to be the best in the competitive market, trying to serve the best of products and services at customers’ disposal. But how many of you have observed sellers trying to sell the worst?

Years back I was traveling by a train to the holy city of Varanasi. We had entered the borders of Uttar Pradesh and I started observing vendors selling different specialties of their cities. While some offered the famous ‘Agra petha’ others resorted to tea/coffee. Needless to say that Indians, who start their day with tea, wouldn’t deny for a sip or two. Myriad of sellers came to offer tea claiming to be the best. Some accepted the offer, some didn’t.

“It’s a good day”,

You come to me and say.

You shine like the sun

Laughing all the way

Vacillating,

Whether to jump or fly?

Fear adulates both

But so do you.

So what if you fall

Into the ocean of misery?

I’m standing

Right where you began

To help you swim through

To the shallow end.

Again you stand, you rise,

For you were destined

To seek the ether of wise.

My periodic meetings with the pupils have let me observe certain similarities amongst them. Everyone seems to have a yearning for art in some way or the other. In the refreshment time everyone would go and fetch colours of their choice and start drawing their imaginations: some would draw houses, some would trace silhouettes on the paper, but some are consummate sketchers. Ankit is one of them. The sketch I’ve shared is his magnum opus-The Ironman. I asked him where he took help from, to which he replied he drew it on his own without looking at any pictures. At the first instance nobody would believe him, neither did I. It was then when he drew a sketch of doraemon in a jiffy that left me awestruck. By doing so he defied the belief that children from marginal family groups can only make good workers. I sensed a scintilla of iconoclasm. Do you sense the same?

The beginning of the blog was accompanied with the beginning of a new day for me as a teacher. Yes. My penchant for kids was so irresistible that I decided to teach the children of lower income groups. There’s no denying to the fact that kids are always filled with kind of energy that intrigues you-intrigues your eyes while your eyes start to press you to smile-a complacent grin.

The first two kids were Monu and Nisha. Now if you think such kids are intellectually weak or uninterested in studies, you are in a universe of nescience. They are bright, diligent and I confide in their capabilities. I would be proud to see what my nation could be like in the years to follow if we manage to abate the high-school dropout rates bydiverting a trifle of funds from the sectors like the nuclear sector for a better education system.
While talking to them I asked what they wanted to be when they grow up. Their eyes shined, eager to show me what they could see through their eyes for their future. I was hypnotized by the constant wide grin on their face. “A pilot!” Monu answered. I couldn’t have been more overwhelmed. I didn’t want this statement to be an irony in any way – a child from lower middle class, with meager facilities but intense curiosity, dreams to fly and explore the cosmos of what all he could do from up there. In fact I was right in believing that every child dreams and rejoices in a similar manner and hence,each child is equal in the eyes of God.I recalled one of my train journeys when I was looking through the window and saw a village girl waving a goodbye to all the passengers from her little beautiful hut. The village was remotely located so I’m not sure if she had ever been to school. After an hour I reached a town. It was sheer co-incidence but enough to make me gape when I saw a school boy going back home. While going home he saw the train coming and started waving his hands bidding  goodbye-hisfacelightedupwitheuphoriawhileplayingthisgame**.**AtthesametimeIcouldsensehishappinessofgoinghome,reflectedthroughthegleaminhiseyes. It was thought-provoking how every child finds happiness in more or less the same trivial matters unbiased of  gender, caste and race. Who is man to categorize or disparage them and choose aspirations for them?