Is it written?

For the past fortnight, especially since the February 23 morning, the whole of India has woken up to its new-found reality on a screen adaptation of successful chase of dream by a slum youth. Suddenly, sociologists, economists, journalists, govt and semi-govt officials, prospective filmmakers (mostly docu-makers!) make a beeline to the tiny untidy rooms in zhopadpattis still unexplored by a section of the society that otherwise depends on services from occupants of the houses set in a congested unhygienic environment. Everyone wants a piece of story from the slums, particularly after a serving diplomat discovered one in his second novel and a British made it realistic on the silver screen.

The same happened exactly 20 years ago in Calcutta when the city was on the threshold to celebrate its 300th birthday. During that time, all lights were focused on Pilkhana, one of the largest and polluted slums on the other side of the sacred river called Ganga. Dharavi in Mumbai has its own claim to fame, so is Pilkhana in this region. Like Dharavi, Pilkhana in Howrah has been home and livelihood to thousands who deal in recycled items, most of those are toxic and harmful to skin and eyes. Like Dharavi, Pilkhana too hogged the limelight then, incidentally for a film being made in collaboration with its foreign producer. And like Pilkhana, nothing will be changed in Dharavi, because the basic condition and infrastructure at these slums have not changed in all these years.

Someone would say that the slum-dwellers enjoy more facilities now, like colour TV and cellphones, but this is nothing great compared to the lack of basic amenities like safe drinking water or proper sanitary system. Remember the image when the soil-clad child Jamal gets an autograph from BigB in Slumdog Millionaire. I’m not saying that the film has marketed poverty marvellously or the images are drawn from outer space. My only contention is that whether we really try anything to change the fortune of Jamals, Latikas and others. Portraying one slum-bred chaiwallah at a BPO office winning millions is not just the end of the success saga, but the beginning of a dream that millions like others pursue everyday. Some of us are indeed working for slum-dwellers, but they can hardly enlighten them with this piece of rags-to-riches story everyday.

To my view, people living in a brighter society, which depends so much on slum-dwellers, should come forward — not necessarily with funds always but with a proper mindset — to help make slum kids smile. I am fortunate to belong to a family, which lives just 30ft from a slum and helps them whenever there is a necessity. My parents have never turned down their pleas whenever they asked for prasad after a puja at our home. Even an autorickshaw driver uses space in front of our house to park his vehicle after a gruelling day’s work. Donating books, clothes and toys to them came natural to us. Even my father rebuked some drug and dendrite addicts of Jamals' and Salims' age to give up the habit.

Together we can really change the world around us, i believe. If the privileged class of people can take care of only one or two underprivileged family, the world would have been a new one where the line of inequality could be blurred. Nothing is written, we can change destiny of many others, too.

©Supratim Pal, 2009