Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by Dilip D’souza
It happened today (Tues Feb 7), to my amazement, for the third and fourth time in the last couple of months. And at the end of it, someone says to me: “Chill, man! Chill!” I don’t feel too chill, let me tell you.
At the KGAF this afternoon, I left my son in a craft workshop run by Akanksha, the Bombay organisation that works with kids from slum homes. About two dozen kids in all, at the workshop, and today they all took cardboard boxes and made themselves pretend cars. Decorated and painted and everything.
Among the two dozen were several of Akanksha’s slum kids. Nobody noticed or cared: they were as enthusiastic about the workshop as my son or anyone else there, and they were as thrilled with their creations as anyone else. For hours afterwards, I saw them playing with their pretend cars all over the area where the Festival is happening.
After the workshop, son and I moved on to a puppet show in German (!). We sat in the second row; plenty of seats were available all through the performance. Some 6-7 of the slum kids from the workshop also came to watch, sitting on the chairs around us.
Without warning, a smartly dressed guard walks over and yanks these kids up from the chairs right beside me. Shoos them away. I run after him and ask what he’s up to. Insist that he let them be; and if he has any objections, they are my guests and I want them there. “OK,” he says grumpily, “but I’m not going to be responsible when they create trouble.”
“What trouble?” I ask.
One kid sits down again, another has vanished into the crowd.
I sit down too, but again, I’m shaking with anger. It’s OK for these kids to take part in craft workshops with “our” kids, workshops that are part of this very Festival, but it’s not OK for them to sit at the puppet show.
A few hours later, my wife and I come back to these same chairs after wandering around the Festival. There’s a rehearsal for the evening’s dance performance on, and several people are sitting and watching. Including, once more, several slum kids. As we walk up, we see another smartly dressed guard walk over, yank them out of their seats, shoo them away. Deja vu yet again.
My wife reaches the man first. What are you doing, she asks. “The light people said they are running around,” he says. They were sitting down! But we let that pass. “We have orders from our supervisor and the organizers,” the man goes on, “to keep these kinds of people away.”
We tell the kids to sit again, and tell the man we want to speak to his supervisor. By this time the previous guard has also arrived, and, grumpier than ever, he takes me to a table below a tree, where his supervisor sits.
Admittedly, I’m angry. But I believe I explain fairly calmly what has just happened. So I’m not exactly charmed when he looks up at me and says, “Chill, man! Chill!”
Anyway, for what it’s worth, right there in front of me he tells the guard not to do this again.
So Sushant, for that’s your name, I’m going to hold you to your promise.
***
If you’re interested:
The first time, in the last couple months, that something like this happened to me.
Comments
Comment by charukesi on February 8, 2006 @ 7:29 am
oh good, I thought I ws the only one getting into a fight with the security guys for chasing the kids away. I see some of the kids every day I am there now, and a couple of them even reconize me and give me a toothy smile / breezy wave of the hand (I have been photographing them and show the pic to them immeditely on my digicam)
the security guys really have no busines chasing them way or suggesting these kids will create any trouble - they have been perfectly well behaved, sitting quietly through performances and just enjying themselves.
Comment by Anurag on February 8, 2006 @ 10:34 am
This is quite discriminatory. You definitely have more patience and self control than I do.
I have seen the same being done in my housing society. Servants and their children are not allowed on the playgrounds. Even caretakers of children living in the society have to sit out. Pathetic!
Comment by midnighttoker on February 8, 2006 @ 12:38 pm
I saw something similar at the Azad Maidan show. A few street kids upfront when confronted with some beat-laden were commiting the sin of…. dancing.
The security kept trying to move them to the side and would have probably got rougher if it werent so public. Eventually someone was brave enough to get up and stop them. The kids didnt dance anymore though.
Meanwhile over to the other side, a few kids of the same age were running around the same audience area like, well,,, kids. Cute as can be and refusing to be tethered to their maid. Yet not one guard tried the slightest to do anything about it. The difference ?. Well you see these kids werent dressed in torn clothes, and appeared to be related to one of the performers up on stage. Not that their musical pedigree made any difference, it was their ‘babalog’ handicap.
Funny thing, i was at a workshop recently with one of Indias best known percussionists, and in a discussion about African attitudes to percussion he was lamenting how the average Indian will refuse to dance publically in complete contrast to his experience in Africa. Maybe i will point out to him that those who will are not allowed to and those who are allowed to wont!!!.
