labor5

I would like to narrate a story of a 12-year-old boy Nadeem. Whose
mother works at my neighbor's house. I have been yearning to write about this
boy since long. For he is an innocent little boy who is badly
beaten by his master's wife and his drug addict father. He is a little
boy with childish dreams like having sweets, like going to school etc.
But unfortunately he has to accompany his mother to the house where sheworks.
Where Nadeem feels feel cheated out of everything that he
notices around, feels humiliated when he sees what his master, Mr.
Hayat's children, take for their school-lunch. But his mother cannot
help it; she cannot let him be beaten by his uncouth father everyday.

He has to face a lot of hardships at his master's house too. He was
once even caught while stealing from his master's valet. I can recall
the way his relentless wife was screaming at him and hitting him with
her large fists and how she kept him hungry for three days, his mother
kept n asking for forgiveness from that devil in an elegant sari who
wouldn't listen. I even remember my mother asking her to forget the
incident but how cruelly she replied, "You don't know these bastards deserve
this kind of treatment." Everyone was aware that the reason why he had stolen
was to buy his younger sister a pair of slippers because his mother had been
refused a raise in her meager pay. So he had thought of stealing after looking at
the luxuriant exuberant lifestyle of his masters. He had thought that a theft of 100
rupees will not do any harm to their millions of black money. But that stone-heart
could not forgive him that. It was such a big crime to be ignored.

He is a child and children's faces are made up of glittering gold,
irrespective of the colour of their skins. Their eyes shine like stars
as their minds are as clear as any brook. But your eyes, the only neon
sign on hisce, reads, "DESPAIR" I have tried a thousand times to
decipher the message that his eyes shy away from sending across. What makes
them so bleak, so empty of life?

The way my parents and my sisters took delight in me and the way they
encouraged my every step towards experiencing life, is, and will always be an
inspiration for me. And this is what childhood is. This is how I, like many
privileged others, spent my golden days and I sure relish that.....

But Nadeem is a child too, the way I was. Can he relate to any such
incident? Can he recall any time in his entire life when his mother took pride in
him or when his father brought him anything? If yes, then why are their faces so
expressionless? Why don't their eyes smile? Why are their lips sealed? Why don't
they chirp like birds tweeting in the garden? Why are they so unlike the other
kids? Who has snatched away their smiles, their care freeness? Does anyone
have answers to these questions ?

Is this the future of every child of his age who was destined to be
born to all the maids and workers? But that was surely not in his hands to decide
for your fate, was it? Then why do they keep on paying for that ... something that
they did not commit...? Something that they don't have any control on. Will they
always have to either steal for their needs or beg around? Is there any sufficient
work and study plan for them? Who shoulders their responsibility if the blighted
figure of their mother's can't? Who is accountable for these children? Those, who
are living a dead life, with no emotions and feelings, dreams and fantasies,
present and future. Those, who constitute the foremost portion of my country's
population. Will there by any such dawn to give the likes of them a promise of
good times? The so-called ministries for child labour and primary education have
been here for long and still the number of half-naked kids strolling the roadside,
or picking articles from garbage is soaring to heights. If their parents are
unable to shelter them, if the masters are ruthless, what will happen
to these unripe kids? Whose future are they? Which country do they
belong to? Are these the children of a lesser god?

What will happen when the likes of Nadeem enter adolescence? And then are of
age to have a family of their own? How many more Nadeems will they breed? Who
will they blame for the eternal deprivement of their generation? Aren't they facing
an eternal doom? Isn't their condition an incentive enough for them to venture
the worlds of crime? Actually such people hailing from under the all-so-famous
line of poverty come full circle once they go and commit some folly, which just
throws them off the boundaries of being a human being. The unanswered
questionremains untold. The course of life follows, with all the Nadeems being
born, becoming angry adults, and then either struggling their way out of this
labyrinth and then leaving this mortal abode with only an infinite wrestling for
survival behind.