An official assignment took me to a slum at the outskirts of
Kolkata. Being born in India
and living in a Metro slum was not an alien word or concept for me. There are a
couple of them in and around my area. My cook and maid come from two such. But
the one I visited on the official visit left me dumbfounded to the core. The
approach road from the NH that led to the area was enough to give fits but what
lay ahead was abominable. The time of my visit being July the area was all the
more hellish. No proper road existed except narrow pathways. Children like
swarms of flies looked as pathetic as cannot be expressed in words. Each 6-7
yrs was carrying a 1-2 yrs old and almost all were half or full naked. It was a
quagmire of phlegm, mud, rain water and other offal. Children smeared in mud
and dirt picked ‘Ash phal’ (a seasonal fruit) from the heave of dirt and drank
rain water seeping down from the slanting roof of a shabby grocery shop. At the
center point was a congregation of young men. Their vain effort at resembling
Salman or Shah Rukh made them look vulnerable in a way. As we passed the spot
they passed lewd remarks. The decayed red teeth (result of chewing beetle nuts)
actually reflected the decay of the society and so instead of irritating me
made me thoroughly depressed. I could feel their despair and deprivation and
felt a kind of guilt for wearing branded clothes and shoes especially when their
feet were bare and soiled. I am no economist and don’t understand the jargons
of the subject. But the word ‘inclusive growth’ is too conspicuous now-a-day to
skip anyone’s notice. Lot is being said about
the importance of the idea but one visit to Maheshtala was enough to see that
till now it is just a phrase of two words creating storms over some expensive
tea cups in some elite boardrooms. Amazing was the meeting with the father of
ten who unflappably says he earns 100 bucks per day and spends most of it in
procuring his daily share of country liquor and plans to engage his children in
begging in order to fend for themselves. All the while the anemic wife of the
haughty husband stood silently beside him with despondency written large in her
sunken face. Their little brigade, it appeared to me, was their way of taking
revenge to the unknown or may be to us (the favored ones).
On my return journey the faces I met kept popping up and
Left me utterly disillusioned. The thing that was loud and clear to me was- My
India is definitely not ‘shinning’!!
