Chokra – an assignment
Paper on the following quotation: They could not stand our sight, we disgusted them; sickened them. Because we were what they might have to do themselves, one day, to their own children. (Page 306 lines 21 – 23). This sentence describes the Indian poor people's more darker way of making money for survival. At birth, a few of the kids the family has are crippled on purpose to evoke the feeling of compassion for a poor crippled child and it's protecting sibling, in order to get money. The people who have earnings just above survival level, fear that they, one day, might have to force the same destiny on some of their children, but until then it must remain a hidden fear and not something that is supposed to be seen on display every day on the street. At some point one can easily agree with them, but on the other hand there's a lot of irony in play. People know that it easily could be them in that situation, but still cannot even look at them. The entire idea that something like that could happen is abholing but unfortunately also common in India. In fact there are worse things taking place as for example: child “production” & trafficing. A lot of movies about india also have this subject in common, The over population of children. You always see children running around in flocs and asking for money/food & sometimes even autographs(slumdog millionaire). The autograph's could easily be sold for money or collected on. It does happen from time to time though that people (Also a lot of tourists) find compassion in these children, as in the text “chokra” that the quotation is from. It does not seem like the children cares about the compassion they get, more than the money they it gets them. In the movie “a slumdog millionaire” jamal and his brother and the girl arrive at the “orphanarium” where some more grown-up men take care of them, in exchange for begging on the streets. They use the same method as the one that was used on Munmun in “chokra”. The best example is the boy on the orphanarium: They poured acid into his eye's to blind him in the hope that it would help increase the ammount of money he got from begging, the same way as they crippled munmun in the hope of the same.