Social Issue Short Story – All the Perfumes of Arabia…
Photo credit: sienna12 from morguefile.com
Hi. I am the hands of a very busy person. I work constantly, picking up this and that. I hate to say it out loud to the others because they recoil in disgust and terror. My person is outcasted, deemed as an untouchable. I clean the human excreta that lies around in the dry latrines of upper caste families. I am the hands of a manual scavenger.
I was born into a family of manual scavengers. As a child, I never went to school, as I was not allowed to enter one, lest I spread my diseased aura around. I had no friends, just my person who would hold me to her face and weep for hours together. She doesn’t do that anymore; she loathes her hands, hates the part of her body that picks up excreta, day in and day out. She think I’m filthy even after she bathes five times a day. She detests her body completely, yet she has no choice; it is her only source of livelihood.
Every morning, she gets up at 5, and I splash cold water all over her face. I, then pick up a broom and a basket and set out to clean toilets in the village. I begin at the upper-caste Hindus lane. I am expected to simply do my work and move out of their way without complaining. And I do that, precisely. My broom obediently brushes the excreta into the basket; sometimes I am forced to pick up the left-overs myself. I feel dirty, foul and disgusted for the stench is nauseating, but I have to bear it, for I cannot fail the person I belong to. Where else can she go?
I then place the basket on her head and set off to dump it in the fields. There are pits dug out for this purpose. I remember, once, the basket fell deep into the pit and she cried out in distress as that was the only basket we had and we didn’t have the money to afford another. She jumped. Right into the pit, amidst all the filth. And she thrust me into the mess, sweeping me around to find it. I choked. I wanted to die right there. She found the basket and took us home. She did not eat or sleep for the next 7 days. This entire business is so humiliating and beneath her dignity that she hesitates to let me touch God’s idol, and I feel scared to pray to Him with my impure hands. It has been ages since she has hugged her children; she doesn’t want to pollute their innocent souls.
And so I weep from the sweat of her toil, from the tears of her helplessness and I feel guilty for there is nothing I can do until she decides to. Till then, I can only wipe her tears and hope that I don’t disgust her.
This is the story of nearly 1.33 million people in India, leading an undignified life that they do not deserve. Many are paid a meagre Rs. 50-60 a month for their “services”. Hardly enough to survive the day. Though the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill was passes this September, I wonder if there will be effective implementation at all. Though the law prohibits manual scavenging, does it provide an alternative livelihood? How will people, like her, even regain their self-respect? It is an indelible scar on their lives. Will they or can they recover from it? Will they be treated as equals in society? Will their hands ever actually smell of the perfumes of Arabia?
