Girl talk

Driving in to work every day I see more than I did when I commuted by train, often more than I really need or want to see. But it makes me supremely glad that I am who I am, what I am and where I am, given that position by parents, hard work, life and circumstances. What if I had been the woman who begged at the intersection, or the girl who lived under the bridge, or even the child who tried to sell very battered lemons outside the grocery store? What would I be then? Who would I be?

My thoughts during this hour-long drive haven’t always been like this. There was a time not too long ago when I preferred to fade into my own mind, dazed with sleep, boredom and grief. Then it became an interested, often amused survey of the hoardings and signposts along the roads, from the latest television soap teaser to bank services that sounded even less tempting than an overdraft. Gradually I started looking into other cars, in a sort of invasion of privacy that I would normally abhor, especially if it was directed at me, and watched people sleep, read newspapers, talk on their cellphones or argue with their wives. All the while, at the traffic lights, I watched beggars swarm, pleading for a rupee, for a handout, for attention. Most were shooed away, some were given a tiny something, others ignored.

Then, one day, very recently, I looked into the eyes of a little girl who clutched a clothes-less, one-armed Barbie doll. The child was tiny, underfed, dirty and probably unwell and hurt. She gazed at me through the glass of my window, not asking for anything but obviously needing plenty. All the while, her grimy paw stroked the improbably golden hair of the doll with the love every child needs. I was not sure how to react – how does one react to a situation of this kind? Offer the child money? Smile at her and make gentle conversation? Storm out militantly and demand to see the parents who had brought her into her cruel world? Or imperiously gesture for her to step back and go away? The signal changed to green; I was spared the need to make a decision.

But she stayed with me, her dirty little face etched in my mind for at least the whole day. Would she have been better off in an orphanage? If I had been able to take her home, would I have ever regretted it? Would she? Or would she have grown up to be like her parents and the rest of what seemed to be her vast family – all living in a filthy corner of a pavement, their scant possessions spread on a hearty growth of mould and vermin droppings, their lives and livelihood at stake from teeming traffic, money-hungry police and those who wanted that little patch of land and were willing to kill for it? I could have picked her up, cleaned her up and brought her into my world to be a little princess, bright, pretty and well-bred. But then, how many little girls could I make mine? And would I really be ‘saving’ her? Maybe she, like me, was better off with our lives meeting only through the glass of a car window.

My thought processes were interrupted when, a few blocks further along my route, a little girl dressed in oversized but carefully altered trousers and a T-shirt begged me to buy a tabloid newspaper. She was older than the one before, maybe eight or nine, and scrupulously clean and neat except for a few rebellious hairs escaping her tightly wound braids, their ends tied into enormous bows of zari-striped red ribbon. She looked at me, beamed a wonderfully toothless grin and told me that the paper she held was three rupees. Would I buy it? It was a good read, she promised. I wound down my window a little. She smiled, still keeping a safe distance from my car. Can you read, I asked her. She told me, with intense pride, that she went to school and was learning how to read and write and she could say a few words in English, too – good morning, madam; it is raining today; what is your name; what is the time. I told her that she should do well in school and that though I did not want a paper, I would see her again and we could talk more. She grinned her sunshine grin and ran to the pavement, from where she waved as we drove past.

Two little girls, two very different lives, two individuals who would grow up to face two different worlds. Which would be better? Which could I have been, in another time and another reality?