LOST SPRING

                                       Lost Spring

 

Introduction 

 

           The lesson is taken from Anees Jung’s book entitled lost spring stories of stolen childhood’. “She analyses the grinding poverty and tradition which they live of innocent childhood. Be he a Saheb of Seemapuri or Mukesh of Firozabad, every child worker leads a life of misery and want. The rag pickers of Seemapuri nearby Delhi and the children engaged in the bangle- I making industry of Firozabad share the same fate. They share the same poverty dirt and exploitation.

 

 

Summary

 

 

  1.   Searching for gold in the garbage

           

           Anees Jung comes across Saheb every morning. He is searching for gold in garbage dumps. He came from Dhaka. He does not even remember his old home. He does not go to school. There is no school in his neighborhood. His full name is “Saheb-e-Alam’” It means lord l of the universe. But he does not know what it means. He roams in the streets with his friends. I They are an army of barefoot boys. They work in the morning and disappear at noon. They live in poverty and can’t afford even shoes or ‘chappals Other young boys wear shoes. But most I of the ragpickers like Saheb remain shoeless.

   

 

   2.   Seemapuri-a home for rag pickers form Bangladesh

 

           Most of these rag pickers live in Seemapuri. It is a nearby place of Delhi. There is no sign of any development and progress here. The houses are of mud. They have roofs of tin and plastics. There is no sewage drainage or running water. More than 10,000 ragpickers have lived there for 30 years. They come there from Bangladesh in 1971. They have no identity or permits. They have ration cards that enable them to vote and buy grain. For them food is more important than identity Women move around in tattered saris.

 

 

     3. Survival mean  rag-picking

 

           Children grow up. They become partners in survival. Survival in Seemapuri means rag-picking. Through the years it has acquired the position of a fine art. Garbage to them is gold.  Sometimes a child can find a silver coin in a heap of garbage. There is always hope of finding more. Garbage is wrapped in wonder for children. For elders it is a means of survival.

     

     

     4. Saheb gets a small job

 

           One morning the narrator sees Saheb standing by the fenced gate of a club. Two young men dressed in white are playing tennis. Saheb is also wearing tennis shoes. They are discarded/rejected shoes of some rich boy. He refused to wear them because of a hole in one of them. For Saheb even shoes with a hole is a dream come true. Now Saheb works in a tea stall. He gets 800 rupees and all is meals. His face has lost-the carefree look. He is carrying a steel canister. It seems heavier than the plastic bag that he used to vary on his shoulder. The bag was his. The canister belongs to the shop-owner. Saheb is no longer ‘his own master’.

 

     

 

   5. Mukesh insists on being his own master

                

           Mukesh wants to be a motor mechanic. He will learn how to drive a car. But his dream looks like a mirage.  He lives in a dusty  streets of Firozabad, the town is famous for its bangles. Every other family is engaged in making bangles. It is the center of India’s glass blowing industry. Families have spent generations making bangles for women. Mukesh’s family is among them.

 

6. 20,000 children work in the glass furnaces

                 

             About 20,000 children work in the glass furnaces. No one knows that it is illegal for them to work in the glass furnaces with high temperatures. They are choked with garbage. There homes are small with crumbling walls they have no windows. They are crowed with families of humans and animals. The narrator sees a frail/weak woman. She is cooking the evening meal for the family. She is the wife of Mukesh’s elder brother. She is not much older but commands respect as the ‘bahu’ of the house. As custom demands she veils her face. The elder of the family is a poor bangle maker. He was failed to renovate his house. He is unable to send his two sons to school. He knows nothing expect the art of making bangles.

 

   7. End up losing their eyesight

 

               Mukesh’s grandmother has watched her own husband go blind with the dust from polishing the glass. But they cannot give up ‘god-given work’. They have been born in the caste of bangle makers. In every street of Firozabad one can see bangles of each and all colours. They are piled on handcarts pushed by young men. In dark hutments sit boys and girls with their fathers and mothers welding pieces of coloured glass into circles of bangles.  Savita is a young girl sitting along-site an elderly woman. She does not know the sanctity/purity of the bangles they make. They symbolise an Indian woman’s ‘suhaag’. They symbolize auspiciousness in marriage.

 

8.   Do hard work

 

                    Little has moved with time in Firozabad. They cannot organize themselves into a cooperative. Middlemen exploit them. There is no leader among them. There are two worlds. One is the world of bangle-markers. They are caught in a web of poverty. There is another world of money-lenders, middlemen and the policemen. Mukesh’s eyes are full of hope. He wants to be a motor mechanic. The narrator asks him if he dreams of flying a plane. He silently says ‘no’. He is content to dream of cars that move down the streets of his town. Few planes fly over Firozabad.