Lost Spring — Class 12 English

An excerpt from Anees Jung's book 'Lost Spring: Stories of Stolen Childhood', this prose piece analyses the grinding poverty and tradition that condemn children to a life of exploitation. It is told in two parts. The first follows Saheb-e-Alam, a barefoot ragpicker in Seemapuri on the edge of Delhi, whose family migrated from Bangladesh. For these squatters, garbage is gold — a means of survival — while for children it is wrapped in wonder. Saheb later takes a job at a tea-stall earning 800 rupees and meals, but loses his carefree freedom, for he is no longer his own master. The second part is set in Firozabad, the centre of India's glass-blowing and bangle-making industry, where families spend generations welding glass in dark, airless furnaces, often losing their eyesight. Mukesh, a bangle-maker's son, dares to dream of becoming a motor mechanic instead of following the family trade. The author shows how the bangle-makers are trapped in a vicious circle of poverty, the stigma of caste, and exploitation by middlemen, policemen, bureaucrats and politicians. The story contrasts the dreams of poor children with the harsh reality that crushes them, and questions a society that allows such child labour and lost childhoods.