As I sat in the audience at Santa Clara University (at a book reading hosted by the American India Foundation in partnership with the Commonwealth Club of California. AIF hosts a number of such enjoyable and informative events throughout the year), listening to the soft-spoken, very articulate Somini Sengupta, I was struck by the parallel trajectories of our lives.
Both of us, Americans, born in India but who had led vastly different formative years. Somini migrated to America at eight years old and grew up in a re-created India, an idea of India fashioned by her parents — the most vital piece of which was Ma Durga who arrived at LAX from Calcutta in all her Plaster of Paris glory and was duly worshiped every fall with ululations and blessings from a Brahmin priest.
In stark contrast, I grew up in the upper middle class suburb of Juhu in the city of Bombay now re-christened Mumbai (I stubbornly cling to the past and refuse to call it by its new moniker). My life was a bubble — highly westernized, attending parties and possibly the only ululating I conducted was at the disco at the Taj. Life was a whirl of private parties at sea-side villas and treks to Rang Bhavan for rock concerts with a little bit of swotting thrown in, come exam time. We would sway to Madonna crooning ‘Like a Virgin’ and to the just released “Purple Rain” by Prince on VHS tapes obtained from our uber-hip and well-traveled friends.
It was a glorious time even though India had not opened up after being forced by the IMF to institute reforms — because, we teenagers, in our small wealthy enclave had created our own version of a modern, hip India. It’s not as if I was unaware of the stark contrast between the haves and have-nots, of the two India’s; It was just more comfortable to ignore it.
When I moved to the US for graduate school, my to-ing and fro-ing to India started. This is where our paths converge — Somini had been doing this since she was a pre-teen and her cognitive dissonance of growing up in two worlds paid off when she became the first reporter of Indian descent to be appointed the New Delhi bureau chief of the New York Times.
I started my travels as an adult. And with age and having my own children awoke the dormant realization that so much more can and should be done to alleviate the lives of the millions of children whose potential goes untapped everyday. By the mid-2000’s, India’s young were seen as its crowning asset but with the most formidable challenge yet — to create jobs for the 10 million people who come of age every year!
India achieved freedom at midnight on August 15, 1947 but now the generations of children born after the economic reforms of 1991 are chafing and clamoring and hollering for their place in the sun. These are noonday’s children and Somini Sengupta in her book “The end of Karma” presents selected portraits of this most-transformative, aspirational generation.
“The post-1991 generation had been led to imagine it could re-write its destiny, that it could shake off the karma of past lives…In the coming years, India can thrive because of its young. Or it can implode. Or both. There’s little time left”.
The very first person we are introduced to is Anupam Kumar, the son of a lower caste rickshaw driver growing up in the slums of Gaighat,Patna, the most feudal, backward state in India. His goal from the moment of birth was to outrun his destiny. Somini chronicles the life of this golden child, born of barely literate parents, where the driving force shaping his destiny is his mother — who never discouraged his wildest dreams, never clucked her tongue when he talked about conducting research even when she had not the faintest clue as to what it meant She fanned his ambition while simultaneously swatting away the mosquitoes on humid afternoons.
Despite the lack of electricity or teachers who could barely read the text-books being taught, Anupam managed to ace the IIT entrance exam and instantly become an Indian icon. All this was made possible because of his indefatigable mother, Sudha who had studied up to class 6. The fact that she could read was what kept her hustling to get her children the best possible education under the circumstances. Despite the social challenges of loneliness, a lack of English speaking skills and a disastrous freshman year at IIT, he pulls through and ends up getting his MBA from IIM, Kolkata and a job in the financial sector in Mumbai.
Anupam’s story is the exception. He is a prodigy who succeeded despite the hurdles the State had thrown at him such as failing schools and clinical malnourishment. His is a story of sheer grit in the face of poverty and of the important role that having a semi-educated, plucky mother played in determining the course of his upward mobility and carving out his own destiny.
We then meet Supriya, a well-off, stay-at-home mom who lives in the concrete jungle of Gurgaon and her maid, Mani, an adivasi from the hinterlands of Jharkhand. This story explores Supriya’s psychic awakening and the collapsing of walled gates to peek into the lives of others much less fortunate than her. Supriya lives in the exclusive enclave of Central Park, a gated community with access to its own power, water and sewage disposal.The diaphanous veil that shields Supriya from utter misery is lifted when she gets pulled headlong into a search for Mani’s abducted niece, Phoolo who has been dispatched off to a family in Delhi to work as a maid as part of a trafficking ring. It is indeed ironic that Phoolo, who lives in a village without toilets, water or power, has a mobile phone that can be charged only at one store connected to the power grid on the highway. This is where she gets accosted and later abducted to be sold to the slave trade.
The last profile is of a spunky, outspoken girl, Varsha, a dhobi’s (washerman’s) daughter. She is a dreamer who wants to rise and study and dance and become a policewoman. She has the same aspirations as Anupam the prodigy we met first. The only difference is that Anupam had a fierce, dedicated mentor in his mother whereas Varsha has a papa who loves her, is her ally but also her biggest obstacle; he will not let her fly. His fear is understandable given the precarious status of girls near Gurgaon. They could get attacked, raped and killed and if they reach for the stars, they may have difficulty getting married. Varsha has all of noonday’s aspirations and she pushes and studies and scores high in all the exit exams, all this while making chappatis for her family and washing, ironing and delivering clothes for the family business. Girls like Varsha are educated, but to get into the workforce, they need to learn a marketable trade. The boys are in the same situation too — the term “Precariat ‘ a play on the word “proletariat’” by Guy Standing (a University of London Economist) describes it well. These young men, the by-products of a global economy are loping around, dissatisfied, jobless or working on multiple odd jobs without land or a social safety net and living precariously on the edge. The only power these men have is to kick the women and girls around them.This was poignantly essayed by the late Jehangir S. Pocha in his seminal article “Pity the Rapist” in The Huffington Post.“It is young men nursing these powerful but inchoate feelings of frustration, inadequacy and resentment that wander the streets at night, looking for thrills, or just a way out. They are the amoral men emboldened by the virtual absence of law and order who gang up and goad each other to prey on women and children. Having never been treated with any consideration, they show none, and having only learnt to get by grabbing, they grab the closest, easiest thing — sometimes a five-year-old, sometimes a 50-year-old, sometimes a friend’s daughter, sometimes a stranger.
In this book, Somini has tried to show the resilience, determination, despair, obstacles, yearnings and hope of a young India. From their generation, we could get something extraordinary, maybe a life saving drug, a song that will blow our minds or an environment-saving invention that will spew less carbon into the atmosphere. You could be sitting on your couch in Palo Alto thinking: Why should I care, I am out, I have exited, I can ignore this. But bear in mind — India is a story that will shape the world in the years to come. The lack of the most basic education of India’s most ignored children will cause horrific after-shocks. By 2022 India will become the world’s most populous nation and also the worlds youngest. While the rest of the globe grays, India will come of age.
Somini and I are both daughters of privilege. We had the incredible luck of being born into the right families. After the halcyon days of my teens, as is inevitable for most, I have faced hardships and despair along the way. But there was always hope and the many silver linings available only to someone fortunate enough to have a good support system of family and of state. When I see the excessive molly-coddling and frenetic hyper-parenting of kids by their upper middle class parents, the copious effort that goes into packaging their offspring from birth for the most exclusive schools, the right extra-curriculars, the padded resumes and the perfect internships in a desperate quest for a high-octane, sparkling future, all I see is a generation trying to chart their children’s destinies, instead of allowing them to find their own.
If we can channel even a modicum of that dedication and money and direct it towards the selfless people and organizations and NGO’s (American India Foundation, Pratham, Akshaya Patra, Akanksha, Borderless World Foundation and many more) doing all the groundwork, we could ensure the stability of this behemoth population that is set to take over our world.
Our children will be okay. We need to worry about the rest.
