Starting tomorrow, I will be heading off to a village to spend a month. The village in which my school survives, betwixt solemn juvenile neem trees who sway lazily and yet bureaucratically in sandy breezes. A school some 15-20 kilometres away from the place where I live now, a journey of blissful peace, yet with a grim undertonic omen. A journey through a road boulevarded by meadow grass and daffodil-like yellow blossoms, patches of ups and downs, hills and valleys.
My school is in a village called Gudda Deher. It displays the name “Rajakiya Uche Pradhamika Vidyalay” (Government Upper Primary School). Classes range from one to eight, students from three to seventeen years of age. Class one has a rather nomadic population. If you see one today, do take their picture for reference, for in all probability, you will not see her/him tomorrow. They are all rather smaller than half the required age to attend school – 6. The oldest in class one is probably five years of age. They all sit nonchalantly disinterested in the proceedings of the class, whether it be mathematics, or games. Hard to even classify them as children, for they seem to be of a lost lot. They sit with the weight of heaven knows what on their bodies, like the man with the hoe. They look not, see not, sing not, play not, colour not. Perhaps they be scared of their teacher-torturers?
They all speak a language which is a blend of Hindi, Marwardi, Shekhawati, and many others whose names I know not yet. Of course, I do not get a word of what they say, and thus, neither do I get a word in the proceedings.
Classes are clubbed, one and two sit together, so does three and four, five, six, seven, and eight have their own spaces to claim.
Teacher-torturers
These are individuals who wear costumes and ranks of servants of the Government, guised to ‘teach’. And what do they do? Or what do they do not? These individuals, most of them, barring two, love shirking classes, sitting under the neem trees sipping tea, unless there is an inspection from Sarva Shiksha Abhyan. Their second favourite hobby is torturing the children. They hit, slap, punch, kick, throw, pinch, twist, et al the children. The last day, one of them told me with a weary look, “What to do… The government has banned sticks also!” I don’t think they shudder have an idea of what the Government has and hasn’t banned. Their physical abuse would put to shame the fiery veer jawans of the Kannada Protection Sangha who prowl the streets of Bangalore to chance upon the hapless clueless (and all but money and gizmo less) immigrant software employee. Kids are just punching bags that throw a challenge to their worthy fists. *dish phtwack dhjung ptash*.
And the kids, they just wail, until the get a few more *pthacks*, and then, they just shut up. Numb in their existence. Beyond sorrow or fright. The child with the hoe.
The principal is a chilled out guy. He likes to sit in his office, doing nothing, discussing alcohol, nicotine, and sex. I should ask him for sex advice, he said. He’s an expert in the field, he said.
Let us talk about child labour
Oh how I remember how we used to fume over that lone child wiping tables in the restaurant in Bangalore. The poor child imported from some unheard of village in Tamil Nadu, now serving the wipes to serve his family. And how we used to dial 1098, and how we used to talk, fume and fiery. How we used to make presentations, show documentaries, write papers.
Here I am, in a school were child labour is a misnomer. If labour by default is to be borne by the child, one wouldn’t call it child labour, would we? The school children are forced to clean their school premises, cook food, clean up after the teacher-torturers, make tea, wash the teacher-torturers’ dishes, get water for the teacher-torturers, carry tables and chairs, etc. etc. etc. I do remember that we used to carry tables and chairs in our school for functions of sorts, but we used to do it with a joyful enthusiasm. We weren’t forced to do it. Here, they are. After a forced assembly, a Nazi type voice rings out, announcing thus: “Eight standard girls, clean up your school”, and off comes an army armed with brooms and wipes, cleaning out each class, the staff room, the school premises…
Any child who is a little slow at it, at brooming or at washing the teacher-torturer’s tea glass, gets a whack on the head. “Hurry up you donkey”.
This is a Government school. Child what did you say it was again?
The last place a child should be sent to – school
Magnanimous. An overstatement? Oh no. No child should ever be sent to any school. Forced to learn constructs of 1, 2, 3 and a, b, c, to conform and fit into society, schools are centres of brainwashing. They function to drain our children out of the energy, love and innocence that life bestows. Grouped together on the basis of constructs like age or IQ, shut off in classrooms, or at least in fixed sessions, mass produced, schools rape children. They rape children of their beauty, of their innocence, of their magic, of their amazingness, of their oneness, of their Nature, of their uniqueness, and impregnates them with the semen of conformity, of anonymity, of being seams in the stitches of our constructed systems (systems which has no meaning or purpose in themselves or at the product end of them), of being bricks in the wall. Whatever the school be, NCERT, GSCE, IB, ICSE, Montessori, Krishnamurti, or Steiner.
Or perhaps not? To prove or disprove, here goes my life. Hello world.
