We Have Neither Joy of Living nor Sorrows of Death

He takes his seat near the Hanuman Mindir, side by the door, where he could see both the Lord and His disciples. Anmol Saha, 82 has reserved this place; he sits on the sack spread over a dusty floor, Keeps his stick beside and a steel bowl before him for coins to drop in. 

Anmol Saha has limbs that do not move and ears that do not hear. He is brought to this place every day by his son who collects the garbage from the bins and earn at least for half a stomach a day.

Bisnandu Saha, is only 11 and he has a blur memory of his mother, who passed away with a prolong illness, perhaps malaria. “We had no money to take her to hospital and even good food to give her the strength, and I don’t remember when my father gone paralyzed” cries Bisnandu.

Bisnandu’s day beings with the crack of dawn, taking his father to his every day’s place, he moves around the town looking around for recyclable wastages with the sack hanging from his shoulder  down on his back.

He buys a bun for their breakfast with a cup of tea in a small street restaurant and move around for search of wealth for the next meal, lunch, which me takes with his father near the temple. He can be often spotted lying under the tree sharing that old sack with his father when the sun is too hot, but much to worry is the rain, where their house made up of plastics and sacks bears lot many holes. On a rainy day Bisnandu and his father has a separate space in a cowshed of Mahajan Surya.

“Our clothes are torn and dirty, we get no enough money to buy, we wear those thrown ones, that we collect from the street. Nobody likes us and gives us a job, the malliks (shopkeepers) even scolds us if we stand near by their shop” he mutters.

Bisnandu loves going to school and having playmates, he often watches the school children neatly in their school uniform and enjoying with their play mates in the school ground.” I am not born with fate to be like them” he cries and move again with his sacks to collect the waste.

There are many such children, unloved, uncared, homeless, many have resorted to drugs and crimes, they are beaten and left with scars for life time.

Unlike those children, Bisnandu understands his responsibilities on his frail shoulder. “I have my father, he is everything for me, as long as he live I’ll have no problem, he is source of my inspiration” he says.

In the evening, after the sun set, they sit to count their days score and if it is high they keep for next day’s meal. Having done it he sits near his father and they sing the religious song. 

Bisnandu has picked up many of the Hindu religious values from his father. He firmly believes that human has nothing to call as his or her, it appears and disappears and are results of one’s karma, everything in this life is temporary, it’s a illusion and world itself is made for suffering.

With a smiling face he says “We are dirty, we are poor, we are unloved and homeless but what we have is, we have no one, nothing to care, nothing to protect, no hatred, no attachment, we can die peacefully, although homeless here, we have home in heaven”.  Pointing to the statue of Lord Hanuman he says “we need not have to go to doctor, he takes care of us, we have neither joy of living nor sorrows of death, we have HIM by our side.

Living under the fly-over bridge

At the background of the busy town of Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, Nandi Mali, watches the busy schedule of the town from her tent under the shadowy flyover bridge, near the railway station, which was her home ever since she was thrown out to the street after she has been attacked by leprosy.

Hailing from a remote village in Muthayampati, she has no children of her own and left by her husband. She has always struggled for food and sound sleep at night, living with her far relatives before leprosy came to her at the age of thirty three.

Now she is fifty six but she looks as if a grandma of around seventy,  may be this adversity of life has counted and summed up into her aged to give her this looks.

With the flyover her roof and three side walls of torn black plastics, she stayed before her door begging. The dump covered area where sun light hardly crept inside, and dusty wind sweeping her,  she looks around for someone kind enough to throw her a coin. Shaking her un-shaped limbs and with lips vibrating with name of Lord she spends her day below this bridge, sitting on the old torn sack, spread over the dusty ground and leaning against the mosses grown wall.

Her hair long and brown with dirt, eye almost sunken into skull and cheeks folded in wrinkles, with the torn clothes that guarded her from hot air of town that scorched her skin, Nandi Mali looks for the death to pick her up soon.

In a whispering note, she tells, she could have been well if she had ever been introduced to medication, and life would not have turned this way if she ever had her own children.

She rewind her pale memory, of how she worked in the field and looked after the cows, and with tears rolling down her wrinkled cheeks, she admits it as her fate, “May be, I have committed sins in my previous life, so I owe this punishment today”.

Like Nandi Malli, many have taken the shelter below this bridge, but what sets Malli different from the rest, is her fervent prayers, she accepts everything that the life owe to give her, and have no any word of curse on her relatives for throwing her to this street without a tinge of love and mercy in their heart.

She mutters” Life is a test for acceptance and patience, only the learned one chuckles with it and the fools cry, I know I won’t be like this in my next birth”

And with her hands joining together and raised above her head she prays, “if GOD ever answer my prayer, I would walk to Meenakshi temple in Madhurai and die there in the lap of Mother Meenakshi”

Under The Bus stop light:

On any given morning, she can be spotted at the bus stand, pouring over her books, a whether beaten school bag one side and a torn teddy bear (her only toy) on the other. For Nandi, the bus stand is her world this is were she was born ten years ago and this is where she has lived ever since.
 

Nandi’s days starts at 6am, helping out her mother with house hold chores. Then she sits down to prepare her lessons before she leaves for Entally Hindu Balika Vidhyamandir, on the Convent road. Back home at 3:30 pm, she has lunch and plays with other kids on the pavement. In the evening she studies  by the light of the bus stand.

What sets Nandi apart from her pavement play mates is the dedication to her books and the desire to make her parents proud. Nandi’s father Babu is Riksha puller who struggles to earn Rs. 100 a day.

Her mother Marian is a domestic help bring home Rs. 400 every month. This couple from Mutthayampatti made the bus stands their shelter and it’s near end their kitchen. Driving them on one dream: their daughter’s education, “Our parents did not have the means to educate us, so we are lying here on the bus stop and struggling so hard to survive. We do not want our daughter to suffer the same fate. Education will help her live with her head held high. We have not been able to give her normal house, but we are trying to provide her education”, says Marian.

And Nandi is well aware of the responsibilities on her frail shoulders.

“I love going to school and would never like to stop it. I know my parents have to pay Rs. 275 as my school fees. I also know they have to suffer to arrange for that money. I always want to perform well to make them happy”, she says.

Having always lived in a bus stop, little Nandi does not know how living in a house would be. “May be one day we will….but for now, I have my studies, my house hold works and my friends to keep me busy”, says Nandi.

And her dream? To be  nurse.