Nilesh...an update...
To me the most interesting thread that ran through this blog
that Nishant started three years ago was the story of Nilesh. I definitely found it easier to connect to Nilesh’s
story perhaps because unlike R (who wishes to remain mysteriously anonymous) I
am not a big picture person. To
backtrack slightly, Nilesh was the then 11-year-old boy living in a Pune slum
who Nishant had attempted to mentor under the guidance of R. The interaction between Nishant and Nilesh
was the coming together of two different worlds that live cheek by jowl in
nearly all Indian cities-that of the slums and that of the high-rises. Perhaps the only space where the two worlds
interact is when the slum dwellers enter the world of the haves as maids,
drivers and watchmen. And till his meeting with Nilesh that was the
sum total of Nishant’s interaction with the world of slum dwellers...his was an
attitude of kind but distant politeness to those who came from the slums to
work in his home.
I remember how unsure Nishant was about reaching out and
connecting with Nilesh. Nilesh must have
been just as uncertain about connecting with the world that Nishant came from. All in all it was a rather uneasy coming
together of two very different worlds and though an earnest attempt was made by
Nishant and Nilesh the connect was a short-lived one for many reasons...one of
them being the constraints of time for Nishant only had a few months before he
went away on job training.
Over the three years that passed since then, I had
intermittently wondered how Nilesh’s story was shaping up. Nilesh lives with his mother and grandmother
in a Pune slum. There are no siblings in
his life. There is no father in his
life. He would be 14 years old now. A teenager.
On the cusp of adulthood. How was
he coping? Well, R brought me up to
date. Nilesh is struggling now with the question of continuing or dropping out of school. The decision he wishes
to make is big with huge implications for his future. Nilesh considers
the pursuit of schooling futile but his mother is just as adamant that she
wants him to continue. As of now Nilesh goes to school perhaps on a whim very occasionally.
Is this common to most children living in our city slums? I think it is. My experience of children of daily laborers in Kerala, however, is very different for nearly all of them complete their school education. Why is the ground reality of education so different then in the slums of Maharashtra when compared to Kerala? I'll come back to this in a future post.
