I think it was somewhere between dipping his biscuit in the tea and it falling back down, resolutely, into the glass that Aravind told me his name. Dressed in a blue half-sleeved shirt, a glossy gold what-looked-like-paper crown, attachable megalips, a long tail and multiple garlands, Lord Hanuman had been clanging his two metal bells asking for alms.
He was some 4 or 5, he recalled, when Aravind lost his dad. Drunken bar brawls are never really safe, especially when one gets beer and whiskey bottles slammed on the head. That was pretty much enough for his mother to whisk him and his couple-of-years-older sister out of the local school and onto the streets. Sis is usually Goddess Kali. Aravind shuffles between being Lord Ram and his ardent devotee, Hanuman. Mum, occasionally, tags along singing devotional songs, with blue face paint. Areas of business included railway stations, bus stops and, where I was approached, roadside tea stalls. Daily earnings are around Rs.30 each, tallying up to around 60, or in the days mum works, 90 rupees a day. Doing some quick math I figured that brought them an average of around 2.5k a month. Then why doesn’t his mum enroll him into some night school, I asked. “No money, sir. Sister has to be fed.” Clearing my confusion, he elaborated on his statement. Aravind has a younger sister, barely 4 months old. It was his mum’s daughter with a local married man, who spent every other night with her, but hadn’t showed his face from the day the child was born. Buying her milk and necessary food items had proved slightly expensive, notwithstanding the house-rent, either. Mum figured the only way to overcome this would be to use the infant in their ‘business’ too. It did work well for a couple of days. On the third, the baby fainted. Chennai is not a sweet place when it comes to climate. Excess heat and dehydration have caused many a death. That day onwards, mum has kept the child safely in the house, not willing to risk her daughter’s life again.Aravind wants to be a doctor when he grows up. And he counters my statement that one needs to study in order to become a doctor by citing his uncle who runs a clinic, back in his village with a fake board that says ‘M.B.B.S’. And it's pretty successful.
‘But I want to learn and study and THEN become a doctor. If you give me just one rupee…’
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Aravind is now 7 or 8, he can’t be sure. By the time he even comes of age, it’ll be past 2020. The government has set extremely high goals for the nation’s economy and industry. But would any of that make a difference to Hanuman, Kali, their singing blue-faced mother and illegitimate sister? Will the Gods they portray for alms give them a life beyond just that?
He finished his tea-and-biscuit, thanked me, got to his feet and, clanging his bells, went on to proceed to a nearby bus.
