Indian Writing

This terrible report somehow reminded me of Lucille Clifton’s poem:

The Lost Baby Poem

the time i dropped your almost body down
down to meet the waters under the city
and run one with the sewage to the sea
what did i know about waters rushing back
what did i know about drowning
or being drowned

you would have been born into winter
in the year of the disconnected gas
and no car we would have made the thin
walk over genesee hill into the canada wind
to watch you slip like ice into strangers’ hands
you would have fallen naked as snow into winter
if you were here i could tell you these
and some other things

if i am ever less than a mountain
for your definite brothers and sisters
let the rivers pour over my head
let the sea take me for a spiller
of seas let black men call me a stranger
always for your never named sake

A heartwarming initiative from the Loreto Day School, Sealdah, Kolkata is reportedly set to be adopted in sixty-five schools across the country:

Way back in 1994, Loreto Day School had started admitting kindergarten students by lottery to relieve little children of the trauma of appearing for admission tests. The state government emulated the example two years later. Twelve years on, another novel initiative of the Sealdah institution — aimed at rehabilitating street children, especially girls — is set to be adopted by over 65 schools across the country.

Over the past few years, a group of street children, mostly girls, is spending nights on the safe premises of Loreto Day School. Out on the street, they would have been vulnerable to all forms of abuse at night.

“Our school is empty every day from 3 pm to 8 am the next morning. We decided to provide shelter to the local street children during that time. They would otherwise have been molested or even dragged into drugs and prostitution,� said principal Sister Cyril.

Yet as our car swerves to avoid the potholes on the road, I think how I love being home. I love this flawed place. I love that this is where my belonging is least contested; this is where I care the deepest.