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    The Lost Spring

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    mp925323

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    The Lost Spring

    Uploaded by

    mp925323
    4 views2 pages

    Original Title

    The lost spring

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

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    RTF, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

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    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as RTF, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as rtf, pdf, or txt
    4 views2 pages

    The Lost Spring

    Uploaded by

    mp925323

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as RTF, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as rtf, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    2.

    Lost Spring
    ‘Sometimes I find a Rupee in the garbage’
    “Why do you do this?” I ask Saheb whom I encounter every morning scrounging for gold in the
    garbage dumps of my neighbourhood. Saheb left his home lofg ago. Set amidst the green fields
    of Dhaka, his home is not even a distant memory. There were many storms that swept away
    their fields and homes, his mother tells him. That's why they left, looking for gold in the big
    city where he now lives.
    "I have nothing else to do," he mutteres, looking away.
    "Go to school," I say glibly, realising immediately how hollow the advice must sound.
    "There is no school in my neighbourhood. When they build one, I will go."
    "If I start a school, will you come?" I ask, half-joking.
    "Yes," he says, smilling broadly.
    A few days later I see him running up to me. "Is your school ready?"
    "It takes longer to build a school," I say, embarrassed at having made a promise that was
    not meant. But promises like mine abound in every corner of his b
    leak world.
    After months of knowing him, I ask him his name. "Saheb-e-Alam," he announces. He
    does not know what it means, if he knew its meaning-lord of the universe-he would have a hard
    time believing it. Unware of what his name represents, he roams the streets with his friends an
    army of barefoot boys who appear like the morning birds and disapper at noon. Over the
    months, I have come to recognise each of them.
    "Why aren't you wearing chappals?" I ask one.
    "My mother did not bring them down from the shelf," he answers simply.
    "Even if she did he will throw them off," adds another who is wearing shoes that do not
    match. When I comment on it, he shuffles his feet and says nothing. "I want shoes," says a third
    boy who has never owned a pair all his life. Travelling acroos the countary I have seen childern
    walking bareafoot, in cities, one vilage roads. It is not lack of money but a tradition to stay
    barefoot, is one explanation. I wonder if this is only an excuse to explain away a perpetual state
    of poverty.
    I remember a story a man from Dip once told me. As a young boy he would go to school
    past an old temple, where his father was a priest. He would stop briefly at the temple and pray
    for a pair of shoes. Thirty years later I visited his town and the temple, which was now drowned
    in an air of desolation. In the backyard, where lived the new priest, there were red and white
    plastic chairs. A young boy dressed in a grey uniform, wearing socks and shoes, arrived panting
    and threw his school bag on a folding bed. Looking at the boy. I remembered the prayer another
    boy had made to the goddess when he had finally got a pair of shoes. “Let me never lose them.”
    The goddess had granted a prayer. Young boys like the son of the priest now wore shoes, “let
    me never lose them.” The goddess had granted hid prayer. Young boys like the son of the priest
    now wore shoes. But many others like the ragpickers in my neighbourhood remain shoeless.
    My acquaintance with the barefoot ragpickers leads me to

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