Child Labour Destinys Child

Child Labour Destinys Child, a photo by firoze shakir photographerno1 on Flickr.

In India ,the magical mystical land, one spots a dichotomy of pain, happiness, living cheek by jowl.People would taunt me why I shot poor kids, but if you see my pictures with the hawk eyes of a poet you will realize the poor people, are happier than us.They live they also let others live. Sleeping on the road on the pavements, death is only a headlight away, dreams die so do people on the streets.Yes put to sleep as you Westerners aptly put it.

The title of this post is child labor so I wont digress, begging child with another toddler tied to his waist is child labour , hard labour, I did a pictorial sketch on traffic signal kids at Bandra Turner Road, I know what child labor is in this connotation , in a system that sucks. Child prostitutiion is child labor , the worst of its kind, parents hand over their children to pimps in Goa Pushkar , all hand in glove. Destiny's Child makes me throw up, what I see through the crass viewfinder of a child's degradation.

At I talker it is about news journalism, I write poetry of unending pain, I have a girl child 19 years so the pain is more realistic, no melodrama, no pretensions. I am a blogger , I write blogs of pain, I shoot pain that hides as a speck in a frail child's eyes.It hurts terrbly. Little kids in cities are banned from working, but it goes on clandestinely ,the widow mother, runaway father, either the widow will sell her body , or her child will beg, or work at a tea vendors stall. The nights are harsh..always.

We ban , but we dont find an alternative , no relocation, banned from one traffic signal they move to the next. I saw this child, I cropped the picture of the mother , not to sensationalize child labor, but to make you humanize a fault that rises in most third world countries.

This child sitting on the street , looked at me I saw a future like a tear drop in my eye.. yes I cry not just for Imam Hussain but for a Man child too.. We all are beggars sometime or other ..begging for the goodies of life, a ladies love, a good post , recognition what not , we beg we steal , we borrow the breath of life from a somnolent God..an insensitive God..but a God not to be messed with all the same..
Blessed are the meek..
faceless no cheek
man producing superman
a saint a crook and a freak
yes within the beggar child
the beggar childs God we seek
a human shout a silence and a squeak



June 6th, 2007