Geetanjali Krishna: Choices, choices, choices?

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

"You've got no choice in the matter!" I heard Savitri shout to her nine-year-old daughter, Rama, "you just have to do as I say and look after your younger brother and sisters!"

This was an oft-repeated argument in their household, which was seeing bad days ever since television, in response to which she received a tight slap. Half an hour later, I saw her sullenly clutching her infant sister in her arms while her mother went off to work.

Cut to a couple of days later. "You've got no choice in the matter!" I heard Savitri shout again, "if I'm not at home, who will make the food if not you?"

Rama wouldn't cow down so easily. She shouted that she did not like being near the hot stove in the heat.

A heated argument followed, after which the smell of hot rotis wafted through. Seeing Savitri leave for yet another round of housework, it was not difficult to deduce who was making them. She caught my eye and had the grace to look shame-faced.

"We're so badly off, I just have to take up as much work as I can," she said, "I just can't afford to sit at home and look after the children...

I'm lucky Rama's old enough to take care of things at home!"

"You think a nine-year-old is old enough to look after babies and cook for the family?" I asked with great astonishment. "Of course!" said Savitri impatiently, "at least she is doing it for her own family "" back home in Bihar, we were all put to work in other people's houses by her age!"

I looked sadly at the little girl, forced by her circumstances to play mother to children barely two years younger than her.

"Only rich people can afford to have choices," said Savitri in a parting shot, "people like us have no choice at all but to do whatever we can to survive!"

The next morning I saw her sending her brother, spiffy in well-pressed clothes, to school.

"Don't you also go to school?" I asked her. She stared at me, eyes wide with nervousness.

"I have to run home because my baby sister is alone," she said, and scampered off. Soon, Savitri left for work, leaving the little girl with a bawling baby in her arms and a toddler to run after.

Enough was enough. I marched off that evening to Savitri and her husband and said that I would like to sponsor Rama's education with their permission. Perhaps she could come every afternoon and study in my house, I suggested. They smiled. I assumed they were grateful. Then they made a counter suggestion: why didn't I sponsor their seven-year-old son instead?

"He's very bright," said Savitri dotingly, "and so fond of studying." They said if I paid his school fees, my money would be well spent.

"Rama...that girl's not interested in studying at all!," said Savitri, "we've tried different schools, different books "" we've even beaten her! But nothing seems to have induced her to study!"

Her father said that when even beatings didn't work, they were forced to get her name struck off the school rolls.

"There seemed no point in forcing the child into something she didn't like...," they continued unblushingly, "after all, she has to have some choice in the matter, doesn't she?"