After just 20 days of the election campaign ending in Tamil Nadu, I don't remember even a single word uttered by any of the politicians I had met and spoken to. However, I just cannot wipe off certain images, certain faces from my mind and they reappear regularly to nag me. These are the faces of very ordinary people. The kind of people we encounter every day. The voices of some of these people still haunt me. I do not know why these faces and voices torment my conscience. And every time they appear in my mind, I feel helpless, hopeless, angry and frustrated. It was the last day of campaigning in Madras and I was near the Nehru stadium early in the morning to meet Janakiammal, the only woman candidate in the fray from the Madras Central constituency. Janakiammal, a poor Dalit woman, mother of a coolie, was the Puthiya Thamizhakam candidate and was contesting against Murasoli Maran. She knew she had no chance against Maran, yet she campaigned bravely, visited all the poor people and promised them that she would help them if she got elected. Unlike other candidates, she knew what poverty was. Unlike other candidates, she lived in a slum. Unlike other candidates, she talked the language of the poor. Her plan was to begin the last day of campaigning by garlanding the statue of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. There were a couple of people from the print and the electronic media to watch her garland the statue. She climbed the steps waving to the small crowd like a true politician, garlanded the statue, posed for the photographers and waved again. As this was going on, I saw some disinterested women sitting on the pavement, talking among themselves. I was intrigued by their indifference and decided to ask them a few questions. "Do you know Janakiammal is a poor Dalit woman and she is a candidate from your constituency? Are you happy to see a poor woman as a candidate?" I asked them. The oldest woman in the group looked at me for a while and said curtly: "Why should we be happy? She may be a poor woman, but if she gets elected she will become rich and powerful. It doesn't make any difference to us whether they are poor or rich. The only reality is that we are poor. Do you know what poverty is?" The question was unexpected, but I chose to ignore it. She was a thin woman with hollow cheeks and she had practically no teeth. Her sari was torn but she had a lovely smile on her face. Her name was Jaitoon. She had lost track of time and did not remember the year or the date of her arrival in the city. It was a long, long time ago. It was poverty that drove her to the city. She did not even remember the name of her village. "You know I am eighty years old and of late my memory has started failing me." She had been living on the pavement ever since she reached the city with her husband. The pavement was the only home she had known. I had seen people cooking, eating and sleeping on the pavement. Like many other Indians, I too had accepted them as a part of urban life. I looked at them as people who occupied the pavements meant for the pedestrians, as people who dirtied the city. They never bothered me or entered my mind. As I spoke to Jaitoon, I realised it was the first time that I was speaking to a pavement dweller. "What do you do when it rains? Where do you sleep?" I asked Jaitoon. She pointed to a bundle of blue plastic rolled into a ball and kept under the statue of Ambedkar and said, "That's our house. At night we make a house there. These are our vessels and we cook our food here, eat here, wash here and lie down here. As I am very old I don't go to work any more. Most of the time, I lie down here." She smiled again. Her first child, Mumtaz, was born on the pavement. Mumtaz gave birth to her children at the same spot. And it was here that her (Mumtaz's) husband died. All of Jaitoon's memories were associated with the pavement. But even after all these years, she still yearned for a house, a home. Sabya, Vasantha and Santha all lived near Jaitoon's house on the same pavement. Sabya was a good-looking young woman with three children. Two of her kids went to the nearest corporation school. "I came from Katpadi in search of a job. We were very poor, madam, and we could not find any job there." She met her husband in the city, got married here, spent the nights with him on the pavement and experienced her first labour pains lying on the pavement. Now her children too were growing up here. "My children sit under the street light and study. My only dream is that they will get a good job and live in a house. It is wonderful to have a house of your own isn't it, Madam?" Yes, their names were there in the voters' list. ''All these politicians come with folded hands, begging for our votes, promising to build houses for us. But the moment the elections are over, not a single soul remembers us. See I am eighty years old and I am yet to live in a proper house. I have voted for Anna, MGR, Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi. I will vote this time too and I am going to vote for Jayalalitha as she is a woman. Let me see whether she will do anything for us. We thought she would do something for us when she ruled the state for five years. We had great hopes in her. But then who is interested in us the poor except during election time?" said Jaitoon. Unlike Jaitoon, Vasantha and Santha had decided not to vote, in protest. "Only if Vasantha akka votes, will I vote," Sabya said. It was only then that I noticed that they belonged to different religions. "These days when Hindus and Muslims are fighting against each other. How come you people are living together here?" This time all of them laughed and it was Jaitoon who gave me the answer. "Here on the pavement, we have only one religion and one caste and that is, ezhai jati (the caste of the poor)." The smiling face of Jaitoon, the puzzled and frightened expression of her two-year-old grand-daughter, the blue plastic covers and the pavement still haunt me. I feel helpless, guilty and angry inside the sheltered warmth of my home. I often ask myself, as a fellow human being, can I shut my eyes and forget them? I really do not know. Shobha Warrier is also a wellknown Malayalam short story writer.
HOME | NEWS | ELECTION 99 | BUSINESS | SPORTS | MOVIES | CHAT | INFOTECH | TRAVEL SINGLES | BOOK SHOP | MUSIC SHOP | HOTEL RESERVATIONS | WORLD CUP 99 EDUCATION | PERSONAL HOMEPAGES | FREE EMAIL | FEEDBACK