Balloons - Bought and Sold

Full Counts
All Words: 1915

"There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children." - Nelson Mandela

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The blue Toyota pulls up at the traffic signal. The lady in the back seat tut-tuts. "We'll be late," she mutters. "Couldn't you have gone a bit faster and got through yellow?"

"Sorry, Ma'am," the chauffeur replies.

There's a tap at the window. "No," the lady says, but it's too late. Her five-year-old daughter has rolled the window down.

For a moment, they come face-to-face. Two five-year-old girls, one in the car, one standing barefoot on the street outside. Each is reflected in the other's eyes.

"Balloon," the one outside says. "Buy a balloon, please. I'm hungry."

"Mamma," the one in the car pleads.

"No, darling. We'll get you a balloon at the mall. You don't want this dirty balloon."

The traffic light changes colour, the window glides upward, the car glides onward. The barefoot one hops to the kerb.

She does not question why.

She does not question why she is the one outside, her feet inured to the hot, tarred surface. Why she is the one to sell the balloons, while one who could be her twin sits in a plush car, privileged to reject her offering for a superior one.

It is karma

The spiritual principle of cause and effect where intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future

, after all.

The soul is born in to this birth based on its actions in its previous births. Even a five-year-old understands that, especially when she was obviously very wicked in her previous birth. So she must sell balloons by day, and allow one or the other of her 'uncles' to take her skirt off at night.

In India, the good, the bad and the ugly can all be explained by karma. You get something because you lacked or earned it in your previous birth; you lose something because you had a surfeit of it then -- or maybe you stole it from someone else, then. Either way, your soul is either paying for a previous life or stacking up for the next one -- this life only counts in relation to the previous or the next life.

It's a theory that can comfort when times are bad and keep you grounded when times are good. Or it can be a cover for the helpless and an escape route for a dodgy conscience or a neglectful attitude.

And the children are affected most, be it the little naked girl writhing as her 'uncle' parts her thighs and explores her secrets with a pointed finger, or the one in the pretty pink frock who gets the most expensive balloon in the mall, and the whole of Barbie's home-kit besides. Both sleep fitfully. One hasn't had anything to eat and is in pain, the other has indulged in pizza and cupcake and is having nightmares due to indigestion. Both seem to have faulty karma.

The naked girl's mother is a child herself. It was her fate, to be married off as soon as she started getting her periods. That way, her parents didn't have to pay any dowry to the bridegroom's parents. She understands her daughter's pain because she undergoes it herself, night after night, at the hands of her husband, twenty years older than her. She cannot help herself or her daughter. She will not actually, because she knows it's all their own fault, anyway. It has been dinned in to her head that she deserves it, due to her wicked ways in her past life. She is in fact, lucky that she is married to a 'good' man who didn't take any money to marry her. If he has to make up for that by renting her daughter out for money, that's her daughter's fate.

The little girl in the pretty pink Barbie pajamas gets out of bed. She needs to throw up. The pizza and cupcakes come out in to the toilet, in a torrent. "Shh," the maid-servant admonishes her."Don't vomit so loudly. You'll wake your parents, and they'll shout at me. Finished? Let me wash your face. Now go back to sleep. Good girl, good girl."

The maid-servant pats the child till her breathing steadies. "You poor thing," she thinks. "If you were my daughter, I'd give you only curd-rice and fruit for two days, till your stomach settled. But what to do? It is your karma to be privileged. You will go to your friend's birthday party tomorrow and eat chips and fried pakodas

A fried snack (fritter)

and all sorts of sweets. Nobody will stop you, and you don't know that you have to stop yourself. You have a rich father. Nobody will ever stop you, but hopefully one day, you'll learn to stop yourself. Hopefully you won't drive when you're drunk or get pregnant before you're ready for motherhood."

The maid-servant has never been to school, but saves her salary to give her daughter an education. "She will go to college," she says. "I won't get her married till she has a B.A. at least. Maybe she can even work in an office for a while."

The maid-servant's daughter seems to have been born with the correct balance of karma. She lives with her maternal grandparents on the outskirts of the city, and is adored. She is in Grade IV, in a good, middle-class school. Her grandpa walks with her to school each morning, two kilometres away. Her grandma goes to fetch her back, every afternoon. The child is proud to wear her school uniform -- a simple navy-blue blouse and skirt. Her teachers retain old-fashioned values (like good manners, respect, punctuality and gratitude) and teach her to distinguish not only 'you're' from 'your' but nice from mean as well. She learns mathematics and science and geography and history, and art and drama and dancing and singing as well. She looks forward to 'ethnic day' at school, when everyone wears traditional Indian clothes (the girls wear chaniya cholis

Short-sleeve blouse and long embroidered skirt

and the boys wear kurta-pyjama

Loose upper garment and trousers

), and she loves going for picnics carrying roti and sabzi

Soft, round flat bread and vegetable curry

as lunch, neatly packed in two different steel boxes.

Children like her learn to work hard and to play hard. They hand in homework assignments on time, there is no question of asking for an extension, ever. They study for their unit-tests and exams till they not only pass, but pass with a first-class or distinction. If, woe betide, they misbehave and their guardians are summoned to meet the Principal, it is the child who is chastised, not the teachers.

These children learn to divide a rare slab of chocolate into squares and share it, either with myriad cousins, or with every other child in the classroom or neighbourhood. They take it in turns to push the little merry-go-round at the park, to give others a ride. On festive occasions, they decorate the park with streamers they have made out of old newspapers and balloons they have blown up themselves. They have their set household chores -- not only must they take care of their own clothes, footwear and bed-rolls, but help with younger siblings as well. Some of them help out in the kitchen, others around the house. At night, they sleep -- comfortably tired from the day's exertions.

Their parents believe in karma, yes, but they believe that this life is to be lived for itself, too. They know their children are going to go in to the world as adults -- and it is their job as parents to turn out kind, responsible, capable individuals who will stand on their own feet and help ease others' burdens a bit. They want to emulate the auto-riksha

Three-wheeled vehicle

driver, who, against all odds, supported his daughter to top the all-India Chartered Accountancy examination. "Money does not matter," the young lady asserts. "Your willpower matters." Watch her interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm39br7xsJM.

Nelson Mandela says, "There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children." This is a truism. Children represent society's present and its future, and the way they are treated has echoes of the past. The present and the future are linked to, and dependent on, the past. This link, this dependence, this interplay holds a mirror to society's beliefs, its values.

Take traditions, for example. There are several, but I'm going to focus on one. The festival of Diwali, also called the Festival of Lights. On this day, it is believed that Lord Rama returned home after defeating the evil demon, Ravana. To celebrate his victory, people burst firecrackers.

So, on 6th December 7272 B.C. (the day Lord Rama is believed to have returned home), there must have been a handful of people using home-made noise and light makers, to welcome him.

Today, there are thousands, possibly millions of people across the country using a combination of harmful chemicals to celebrate a festival that has become more commercial than traditional. Everyone -- from chocolate makers to fashion houses jump in on the Diwali bandwagon to sell, sell, sell.

Firecrackers are mainly manufactured in Sivakasi. As this video shows, there is a 'dark truth behind these bright lights'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAIREIECCsw
(And I'm not sure why the video blacks out in the middle, but I somehow think that that's symbolic of the content of the video.) Basically, poverty-stricken parents pull children as young as four years of age out of school, to work in hazardous conditions for up to twelve hours a day. They get 50 cents for this.

But wait.

There is 'light' at the end of this dark tunnel.

Schools today are educating their students about pollution, accidents and child labour. And the children of the elite are rejecting the fireworks offered to them by their parents. "We'll light lamps instead," they are saying. They have found the balance -- keeping tradition while rejecting its harmful effects.

Indian schools seem to be on the way to the future. Several institutions and learning to walk the line between ancient Indian education systems; the system of education left behind by India's colonial masters, the British; and more modern methods which are in vogue currently in first-world countries.

So, you have the values of the 'gurukul' school - the ancient Indian residential school in which the 'guru' (teacher) was like the head of the family, and 'shishyas' - students - were treated like children, to be nurtured, disciplined, and given an all-round education till they reached their full potential. This mingles with the 'babu' system in which the British aimed to churn out capable clerks who could follow orders intelligently but without question. Finally, you have manifestations of the modern systems in which the individual, his/her potential and aptitude take priority over the wishes of the one in authority. Where schools manage to amalgamate all these, the result can, indeed, be delightful. Here's 13-year-old Mia, who has been nurtured, dictated to and allowed to fly, depending on her needs at the time.
https://www.facebook.com/miamakesmusic/

So, it comes back a full circle. The past, with its celebration and nurturing, the present, with its duality, and the future, with, hopefully something to celebrate again. A mirror to society's soul, held up by its children. Call it karma, call it will power, call it tradition, call it education -- call it a mixture or an amalgam, it is unique to India and it will forever hold a mirror to the Indian soul.



Thank you Warped Sanity for this review: Review of "Balloons - Bought and Sold"