Going Away Feet

The last two days have been stressful. This is the month of Ramzan and the children are being called to attend a daily 'Qayda' or religious instruction class that clashes with our class timings. All our star students either arrive very late for class, panting, or miss class completely. The kite-mad boys who have to be dragged to school make little attempt to attend, because their more serious friends are not coming. And Laxmi and I wait anxiously in the afternoon hours, fanning ourselves in days that have turned humid and hot once again, waiting with maps and the precious football, to explain night and day on planet earth, where Faizabad is, and the intricacies of the solar system.

We have encountered the complications of sustaining any attempt at educating first-generation learners.

Farida, short of thirteen, has decided she is in love with a boy called Chhotu and has no use for a class where teachers tell girls to first become strong and financially independent before they get married. Rahela and her sisters and brother are notable absentees. Our most loyal follower, Razia, most noticed for her big front teeth, is absent too - she is running a fever. We joke with the children, hand out work, pat heads for good effort, but all the time our eyes return to the gate. Is anyone else going to show up? I secretly feel a pang for Pratibha Miss. She is the Anganwadi helper who used to go to the children's homes to shepherd them for half an hour of Hindi and English alphabets before they began attending our undoubtedly more glamorous class. Now I know how she must have felt!

Our children are going away from us all the time, all over the place, and there's precious little we can do to stop it.

Then I notice that someone has left their footwear behind. Typically, it is a slipper each of two different pairs, exactly what a rag-picker manages to assemble from daily foragings. For no explicable reason, the sight brings me comfort. They will be back. Of course. And I had better learn to manage the extremes of a heart that fills with liquid love every time I see mis-matched slippers.

Phulshan

The children were delirious with joy. We had bought them a football. In the first indication of their natural sporting talent, the older boys kicked the football in straight, shooting arcs that made me fear for the neighbouring windows. Since the class of rag-picker children I teach with my assistant Laxmi has moved to a tin shed in my home here in Faizabad, I have to be careful of what family members and neighbours will say about our more abandoned efforts.

Anyway, the football reminded them that they were after all Bengali/Assamese kids, with football in their blood. So grateful were they for this gift, that they volunteered to trim our overgrown lawn the next day. "We will cut the grass and carry it away," said Hashim. "We will clear up the whole garden," said Al-ameen. I didn't really set too much store by their promises, but there they were the next day, all of them, busily trimming the grass, carrying away bricks and stones that littered their playing area. I had gone out and arrived to find them busy at work under Laxmi's watchful eyes.

"What hard-working children!" I exclaimed. "Have they cleared up all this?" I marveled, noticing a new boy, a small, dark child with chipped front teeth. "Who is this?" I asked, smiling at the boy. "He is bad!" said Razia. "Don't let him come to your school!" "What?" I said. "How can he be bad?" "He will say 'Randi!" said Ramisa. "Oh, he actually worked the hardest of all," said Laxmi. "He came along with them, and began working. I don't even know his name, but he's really sweet."

"No, he's not!" protested Mumtaz. "He's bad, and he won't come to your school, just see. You will give him a bag and books, and he will just disappear." "We'll see," I said. Losing a litle of our investment evey now and then with some child who drops out is an occupational hazard with our class, we have found. Families move to different neighbourhoods, parents decide that even the two hours their child spends away from sifting garbage is too costly for the family, children get too used to being unfettered on the street...there's plenty of reasons to lose our students.

"What's your name," I asked the chipped-toothed kid. "Phulshan," he replied, a name I had never heard before, and had to have repeated several times. "If he begins coming to school, I will stop coming," said Hashim darkly. I was perplexed. What had the little kid done to inspire such dislike among the whole class of them?

Over the next few weeks, Phulshan became one of our favourite figures among the littlest ones. Always dressed in the same drab grey clothes, he showed great happiness at being part of the class, got over his hurt at the other children's rejection of him, and seemed to be getting along fine. Then he missed school for a few days.

When we were going to celebrate Independence Day on the 15th of August, I told all the children to bring along every one who had ever come to our class. "Tell Phulshan!" i reminded them, and sure enough, Phulshan came to our Independence Day function wearing a new, turquoise blue vest and shorts. When I had the children fight with toy swords in pairs, he had to be dragged to the front, he was so shy at coming out before all the children. And yet, surprisingly, he fought with great finesse, almost like a true fencer. "A big hand for Phulshan!" I said, and all the kids clapped. When we were distributing sweets, his elder brother came forward and took some too. "Phulshan will attend regularly from tomorrow," he promised. "And I will come too."

But that was the last we saw of them both.

'Randi!'

In the fourth month of my class with ragpicker children, named Sahriday 'Balwadi' or children's centre to distinguish it from an actual school, we are still grappling with the term 'Randi!', meaning 'Whore!', the favourite term of abuse among two, three, five and six year olds.

They listened to me with wide-eyed attention the very first time I told them it was a bad word and must not be used in class. along with other, worse ones. However, every few minutes, there would be small fights like minor cracker explosions among the kids, with 'Randi!' being bandied about like crazy. It appeared that this particular term was very dear, that it tripped off their tongues almost without their knowing, since it was so natural for them to utter.

My assistant Laxmi and I did manage to make some breakthrough in the weeks of June and July. The older kids began to look shame-faced if they were caught using the word in class. We began meting out punishment. Any child who said 'Randi!' in class was promptly sent home and had to miss play time, or whatever we were doing that day. A whole culture began developing of informers - "He said 'Randi!'", and "She said 'Randi!'" became common complaints that we had to sift through with care. How could we send everyone home? "Did you just say it?" we would ask, towering above the erring child, who looked at us defiantly, while a host of voices around us confirmed, "He did!" "She did!" or, occasionally, "No, she didn't! It was Rushna!"

'Randi!' became more familiar to me and Laxmi than it had ever been in all our adult lives. Sometimes, we would turn from a mild scold to a child and hear him/her mutter, 'Randi!'. "Haven't these children learnt any other way to describe a woman?" Laxmi would sometimes ask, with equal disgust and despair.

And now we are in September, and our class has a blackboard, and is approaching the shores of civilisation. In a discussion about the children's occupation of rag-picking, we talk to them about the different zones for groups of rag-pickers within the town, and learn from them the importance of territory. "Ok, suppose you find some people from Shehenwa (across town) in your area, picking among the trash, what do you do?" I ask them.

"We fight!" says one. "We say 'Randi!'" says another.

The class erupts in full-throated laughter.

That is how far we have come. Turned the near-constant abuse and frustration they have inherited from their parents' speech into a source of humour. Small blessings, but they feel good to us.