[Reader-list] posting: The children of Bhopal Railway station

[Vikas]

Hi!
Well, this is my first posting. I muddled it up - didn't know about the
discussion list.

Over the last 6-7 months I have been regularly visiting (staying at) the
railway station and a shelter home for station children. It is the seam
between the station (and its children) and the shelter home that I have
been focussing on -the uneasiness of the relationship; a relationship
rich in its significances.

An essay, anecdotes, fragments will make up the work. The essay has been
written; work on the rest of things is on. I'm sending the abstract of
the essay (rather something in lieu of it).

Abstract

It is a difficult place, the station. It is difficult to categorise it.
On the one side, it is hell - unabated, ceaseless, torment. A torment
without recourse, where the call of Justice has been spent. The poverty,
the proxmity of Death, pain, violence: these conditions of being. Such
horror, these shrieks of life. It is the place of failures of the
negation, of Justice, of the systems it has subscribed to; it where its
blunders lie as if in a cauldron.

But on the other hand... it is also perhaps something else. It is a
refuge, which people run into, which they come seeking. here they live,
close to Death, at the extreme of life, condoning its extremities. here,
the children also come to play, spurning the world, its grave cares. It
is a difficult place this, station.

And then there is the shelter home. There is so much in it but still
there is so much lacking. Children run away from it. There is so much it
could do but it doesn't. Perhaps it can't. Perhaps it can... perhaps it
is doing....






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