Just another day- Story of a polio ridden girl

By: Nazia Jafri

You asked me to tell you something about my life, my name, my family, my friends and my birthday and how I celebrate, enjoy, eat and be merry. I do not know when I was born. Even my parents have forgotten. After all, there are seven of us. For me any day when I get three meals is a birthday.

You are looking at my legs. It has been like this ever since I remember. My mother says that God made me like this. People say that I got polio when I was very small.

Everyday, I sit outside Ramkali kaki’s dhaba. It is my favorite place in the whole world. It is my school, my playground, my little world. Everything has changed here. But my dreams have not changed. I love to dream. I and my friends, Sana, Mukesh, Ravi, Rakhi, Puja, Mannu, Soni and Poonam, all dream. We want to fly high in the sky on our dream kite but deep in our hearts we all know that the dark streets on which we live are not meant for dreaming. Sana dreams of becoming a teacher but my chachi says “Poonam ki shadi ke bad iski bhe kar denge, hum itna nahi. pada sakte”. They have already got Poonam out of school so that she can work at home. Mukesh goes to school, he has even started to speak English a bit but he cannot continue going to school, as his father, Prakash kaka, needs him to go with him to sell junk that he collects everyday.

I do not know the name of the place in which we are living, Even Ramkali kaki does not know though she has lived here since the last 60 years. Or perhaps her pathetic conditions never gave her a chance to bother about these things. Her sole concern is her jhuggi of two tiny rooms shared by her five sons, four daughters and many grand children. Actually nobody here cares about these things, getting one meal a day is more than enough for us. Sixty jugghis in two streets is what our basti is made of.

Qamrunnisa, one of the shopkeepers here, told me that we can vote. This is the only facility the government has given us. We can vote but not ask for water, electricity, food and so on. Our houses leak during rains but we can not complain. Even if we could, who would ever listen to us? We have a municipal water connection, but water rarely comes. Sometimes, we wait for many many hours. But that is better than the days when we get no water at all. Life has been going on like this and will pass like this only. I have no complaints. This is the way we live. We have been taught to live only like this. All I know of myself is that my name is Seema.