Inside the slums...

One of the first inhabitants of the Kathputali Colony we met up with was a young woman, mother of two. The small family stood outside her tiny house, a single room, cluttered with a bed, kitchen utensils, and a small television set – so dusty that it seemed it hadn’t been used for years. Balancing her little son at her hip, the woman smiled at us warmly.

“Sagun,” She introduced herself. “I am a dancer.”

“We’re from Springdales, here for a competition,” I said. “Just to get a gist of all that live here, we want to ask you some questions.”

She nodded; she was used to this attention. Many people came here, I knew, to see their creativity, their wondrous art, and their surprisingly bad living conditions. Swatting away a persistent fly, the woman smiled, whilst her daughter fanned her face with her palm. The Delhi heat seemed intensified here, with no electricity and no fans. Yet, everyone I’d seen seemed at ease, comfortable in their colony, at home with the heat.

“You said you are a dancer. Where all have you been to showcase your talent?” I asked, picking up my notebook to pen down a few pointers.

“Well, I’ve been to Dubai, Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Russia, France, Holland, Japan, Turkey, Bangkok, and Bangladesh…” She went on and on, the list of countries she had travelled to overwhelming my speed of writing. I expected her to say one, maybe two names of cities or places nearby – hardly did I think she would have travelled the world! Noticing my disbelief, she smiled. “I’ve been to places like Pune, Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Sikkim, Orissa, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Mumbai, too,” She said.

“Wow,” I blinked. “Where did you stay in these places?”

“They stay at hotels,” Our guide from the NGO we had partnered up with, said. “They go to countries with event organizers to showcase their arts and dances. There, they live in the lap of luxury, and most of the people of this colony have been all around the world.”

All around the world, indeed! Every person we talked to was specializing in dance, or music. Most of them had colourful puppets in their houses, with dhols, dholaks and other instruments – handmade, one man told us proudly – at full display. The women wore a rich variety of colours, and the children, walking barefoot in the dirty streets and around the overflowing garbage – seemed to converse in a variety of languages.

“What all are you kids taught at school?” I asked a group of little boys, all watching us with undisguised curiosity, whilst at the same time asking us to click photographs of them.

“Dancing, singing, and sometimes even acrobats,” The oldest of them said. He grinned. “That’s what we learn from our parents too.”

“Show us something?” We asked, teasingly. But all the boys seemed happy enough to show us a few cartwheels, or standing upside down, as an over-enthusiastic one clambered up a ten foot pole swiftly and easily.

“Our parents did this too,” One of them cooed. The others heartily agreed, but by then we knew that all this talent was in their blood. Coming from families with such rich culture, they were all ready and proud to take on their family’s traditions.

Yet for a community that has traveled all around the world, and has such good exposure it was difficult not to be awestruck by the contrast between the poor living conditions of the people, and the rich culture they exhibited. Over time, this colony had lost its sheen, to modern entertainers like televisions, internet, even the cinema. Home to thousands of artists and artisans, the slums are a huge contrast to the inhabitants and their achievements.

It was then that we decided what our service for this aspect of the community would be. Taking help from social networking sites, and creating blogs and websites about this community, we decided then and there that we would do whatever is in our power to encourage, promote and re-establish their culture. By posting videos of the children performing stunts online we would help them exhibit their talents at the best.

They are the ones who can exhibit our culture at its best, after all.

An Enriching Start

Introduction: As a team of two from our school, my partner Anamika and I set out for the Kathputali Colony – slums located near the Shadipur Depot – to find out social concerns and help bring out possible solutions.

The NGO I was working with had assigned me a group of three girls. They were about eighteen or seventeen, which meant not much older than me. I sat down in front of them, with my partner, and they gave me friendly smiles. After basic introductions, I asked them the questions that had been bugging me since I’d walked through their classrooms.

“Do you go to school?” I asked. The girls exchanged nervous glances. One of them, Puja laughed uneasily.

“We did!” She said. “We studied till Class 8, I think.”

“What made you leave school?” I asked, not at all surprised.

“We wanted to study,” Sheetal, one the others, spoke up. “I mean, it was okay, but we have brothers in our families. They will study.”

“We have to cook, you know,” Preeti said. “And wash clothes. We have to do the household chores, the men and our brothers can go to school.”

“Even if we do go to school,” Puja put in. “We can’t, after a certain age. What would society think? What would the others feel? What will our neighbours say about us?”

“But if you do want to study,” I objected. “All this won’t matter. Don’t your parents want you to study?” I knew the answer to that one. In a group discussion we had had earlier, a few parents had voiced their concerns.

“We weren’t literate ourselves, we had to struggle so much,” A mother of five said. “This is why all of my children will go to school.”

 But when asked if they did, in fact, go to school, she hesitated briefly. “My sons go to school,” She said. “My oldest daughter…not so much… Our society doesn’t let girls go to school. What would everyone say? Young girl, going out of the house for hours – it’s not something everybody looks upon with approval.”

“But you want them to go to school,” I insisted.

“Yes, but it’s been years since they left!” Some other woman joined in. “Now they wouldn’t want to.”

Yes, they had adjusted well to this oppression. They had adjusted so well to this unfairness, in fact, that they had forgotten what they wanted themselves.

The younger girls and boys, all were eager to go to school. They would attend the Government school nearby, and then come over to the NGO, learning dancing, singing, playing instruments and sometimes even acrobats in its beautiful hallways. With a computer lab, a dancing hall and music room with instruments, along with a courtyard where they could very well indulge in sports, the NGO was giving the kids the platform they wanted to learn as well as express themselves. The reason of giving such importance to these activities was obvious – it was their heritage, their culture, these families were gypsies, their ancestors all puppeteers and cultural artists, and this took the front seat in this society.

But that did not mean they were absolutely oblivious to the importance of education and modernity. Almost all parents wanted their children to be educated, and do better jobs than being dhol-players in marriages and dancers in baraats. But what they clearly lacked, we inferred, was the awareness and the information about education, and this was what we decided to tackle.

“We’ll hold discussions,” I told Neha, our guide from the NGO. “We’ll talk to parents, to girls. We will tell them why they should study, what they will achieve when they do so. If they want some catching up classes before taking up school again, we will give them that. I will help them take up story writing as a hobby, I will revisit the alphabets, numbers and languages again with them. The target would be kids our age – too young to be in college, too old to sit with the nine- and ten-year-olds to study. We’ll change their perspective, we’ll change this society.”

Yes, we will. The decision was firm, and I knew it would be very difficult, laborious and hard to gather children and teenagers and actually try to inculcate education in their everyday life.

But I am determined to fight for the cause.