Reason Demands

She does art work, traditional art like dry coconut carvings, decorated wooden dolls that are used during dasara, it started as a passion for her, but poverty pushed her to make money out of her talent.

There was a hope that sprang out of the pious lady amid many a hopeless conditions. She was once robbed off her mangal sutra by bikers in the middle of the street, it is considered the only priced possession among the people of her culture and class. Her husband, who in difficulty, survived cancer, now is in the verge of losing his job. Her mother died of cancer few years ago. All these images — technically — should have added to her hopelessness! Well, I realised people like her are above technical calculations.

When I think of her, I remember Jack London saying:

I believe that spiritual sweetness and unselfishness will conquer the gross gluttony of to-day. And last of all, my faith is in the working-class. As some Frenchman has said, “The stairway of time is ever echoing with the wooden shoe going up, the polished boot descending.”

Jack London, What life means to me

***

Once she had earned thousand rupees for a dasara doll she made, and had saved it in a packet filled with coins. She kept it under a deity’s photo for reasons unknown. But it made her happy.

***

She used to go to the bhajans, where she found herself a motherly figure — an old widow, maybe aged 70. “Savithri ajji looks like my mother,” she says often. Savithri ajji’s husband — who she fondly called thata — had gradually lost sight during his childhood, and was bent too. The pair turned seventy this year. Thata and ajji understood each other so well, so as to say they were ‘full of life’ even when their two children partially abandoned them.

Once thata had been to bath — this is about about six months back — and it was a gas geyser which heated the water. He didn’t know why his breath turned hot. He couldn’t even shout. The fire might have burnt his throat. Ajji couldn’t explain it like science, but she said that as soon as she saw smoke from the bathroom, she rushed with water. He was not saved!

‘She’ also felt the pain. When she saw ajji as a motherly figure, it was like sharing the pain of her mother. Her relation with ajji grew deeper since then.

Pause and reflect!

Maybe ‘hopes’ should mutually match for relations to bloom. A hope that says, “The world holds me a mother who can value me as her daughter”. Another hope that says, “I can always find a daughter who need not carry my own blood”. Such hopes carry a value of taking relations impersonally!

***

It is usual that relatives come to her for the beautiful dolls that she make, but not only because the dolls are beautiful, but because she charges less for her relatives.
This way, she saved some money. Money that’s scarce for her. She uses it for small expenses — like she paid for her son’s student bus pass. Her husband takes care of household expenses.

But why all these details? Simply because it needs to be felt. It is a test for our emotional faculties!

***

It was November 8th when Demonetization was announced. The whole family’s currency was exchanged, they did not worry — as this family did not have an ATM card. It saved them from the pains of witnessing aged people dying of heart attacks in huge ATM queues.

***

She, the hopeful one

She, the hopeful one, is seen as an average housewife by the society! Who simply does household chores. The emotions of these people go unnoticed, un-respected, unappreciated!
But parallelly, we see lifeless statues given a huge values! Corrupt politicians praising yet another corrupt politician. To watch their poor speeches in TV, in contrast to the rich and heart-full life of such average housewives, and thousands of their wailing.

Whenever such women are sad, there is a thousand behind the story they tell you. Thinking of all these gives me a pathetic feeling!

***

Getting back. Two years later, once when she was cleaning her house, she got hold of a packet of coins under a deity’s photo. She opened it and found a fresh thousand rupee note! It would give any sane person a poignant feeling to look at her face. A hopeful face turning hopeless!
That glance at the note — which was once her happiness — took her joys away.

Two weeks of passionate effort to make a doll, the happiness of it, including the happiness of earning from it: Snatched! She uttered, “My face bloomed when I accidentally found it, but then I remembered the day…”

Well, she turned back hopeful in some hours and she continues to this day… May be the hope reverberates Marx when he said,

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Karl Marx

-Vinay B.S. (Written last year, somewhere around Nov 8)