The Speil Spell

 The spiel they sell us from ache din to badlaav aa gaya , to saving the girl child to giving the girl child an education. Teach a girl , you teach a family . I love how they write these deluded slogans and one liners to influence and to make sure we vote for the party so governments can be formed and public can be swayed . Every five years we get to choose our leaders who we think are going to deliver just like Moses and the Red Sea would part for us.  We just celebrated daughters day , I even talked about it , motivating every one but today I faced a peculiar problem . A young girl against all odds from a small village in Punjab ( Doaba) region finished her graduation in computer application . Her story is sad , tragic but she never gave up hope and against all odds her grandfather supported her and she finished her studies. To sustain herself financially she started teaching in the village school and now keep calm , and hold your horses, she gets paid Rs 500 each from two teachers every month and that further inspires her to start a business because she wants to make money .

From abject poverty , a desire to good and to be successful her competitive spirit is born , I don’t even know what to say . the system promises us everything , promises a silver lining , promises utopia and jobs . Where are the jobs ? Where is the change we are looking for ? Have we all gone myopic, that we don’t know reality?  I asked for help and a lot of the readers on a public page said that she should emigrate as there is no hope here . Some said she should join a multi national company or some-said that there were data entry operator jobs , or to join the sewa Kendra and she could make money .

Ive figured out what ails us , we are so far removed from reality in our Instagram , social media induced virtual life that we have forgotten that more than 60 recent of India”s population is rural and they do not have the knowledge, access to English , nor do they have any confidence to apply and compete with the rest . They are shy, insecure and not sure how to conduct themselves. They’re best bet is marriage. Ache din is that she as studied and has a degree that has no future now , and she would best be earning as much as a field labourer does.But , what has complicated matters is that now she has confidence and a little ego where she thinks she should earn more but she doesn’t and frustration sets in . 

How do they break the circle? In a time , where inflation is at its highest , jobs are scarce and the badlaav is limited to showcasing new and newer suits of the Cm’s wife and having a bigger entourage than the previous chief ministers . Why did the voters of Punjab be duped on a piped pipers tune of change ? Either way Rome is burning and the emperor is fiddling away a tune that isn’t new . 

My young girl will end up marrying and will bury her dreams and will end up doing business by haggling with the vegetable seller over the prices to , resurrect only when she has children of her own . This all seems far fetched , exaggerated but its not it’s how Jamtara and all others come to birth !  Despair , hunger and a desire to be better in a system that has abandoned them has given birth to the drugs epidemic . We need to save Punjab , not by mere words but by a responsible, collective and individual action .