Geetanjali Krishna: The one and only graduate

I've always been interested in communities whose traditional livelihoods have become irrelevant in the modern context. Which is why when Plan India, a Delhi-based non-governmental organisation invited me to visit Sapera Basti, the village of erstwhile snake charmers somewhere in the dusty bylanes of Badarpur, I jumped at the chance. "You'll meet Mahender there," they'd said. I had no idea who Mahender was, but was interested in getting a closer look at the community, which has been floundering since their traditional livelihood became outlawed under the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. At Sapera Basti, I met Plan India's team, which took me to their project office. "You'll meet Mahender there," they said. Who is this chap, I wondered? I finally found out when I came face to face with 35-year-old Mahender Nath and heard his story.
 

"My father was, like his father before him, a snake charmer," he said. "After I turned seven, he started taking me with him to the forest to trap snakes. However, around that time, there were a couple of snakebite fatalities. While our community made infallible antidotes from herbs and roots, the forests were being replaced by human settlements and the medicines were hard to come by." And so Nath's father decided to give up his traditional profession and become an agricultural labourer instead. "He encouraged me to go to school instead of following the traditional life."

However, going to school in Sapera Basti two decades ago wasn't that simple. "When I was growing up, Sapera Basti was a different world. Teachers didn't like teaching in the school here - neither were the students interested in studying. If they scolded a student, they were likely to find a snake in their bags when they got home," Nath said. Snake charmers commanded fear and respect wherever they went and always managed to earn good money. Sending children to school seemed unnecessary, even frivolous, to them.

School was hard, said Nath, for he was the first in his family to enrol in one. "When I was in my teens, I got involved in social work, and being part of a larger community gave me much-needed support," he said. "We formed a Children's Panchayat, helped with community outreach programmes and became aware of the world around us." Yet, closer home, Nath's contemporaries were dropping out of school. "Some dropped out because they could earn good money performing in marriage parties or playing the dhol. Others dropped out during the wheat harvest season." Although his family was in the same straitened circumstances as their neighbours, somehow, Nath persevered in school.

"When I completed Class XII, my peers began looking for work," said Nath. But he decided to enroll in college. Then, while he was still studying, his father died in 2002. "I was forced to drop out and become a bus conductor to support my family," he said. One day, his professor happened to board Nath's bus. "He counselled me that I'd come too far to give up on studies," remembers Nath. Inspired, he finally graduated with a bachelor's degree in social work a few years later.

In doing so, Nath became the first and only person from his community to graduate, although a handful of young people from there are now in college. In his pursuit of education, Nath encountered several reasons why students tend to drop out - poverty, lack of community role models, poor community attitudes towards education and more. Yet, today, the graduate is a role model and a respected member of his community. "It feels good when outsiders come to meet me," he said, "for I'm proud to be the one and only graduate of Sapera Basti."