In his popular poem “The Chimney Sweeper”, William Blake lambasts the society in which the scourge of child labour is rampant. The poet very poignantly delineates the image of a little black boy who has to work in hazardous conditions and remove the black soot from the chimneys of the factories. The brutal world where we are living today has also not spared the cherubic children. Every morning a little boy blows his trumpet very hard and loud to attract the attention of my eight-year-old daughter.
The boy in the context is a balloon seller who goes from door to door to earn two square meals for the day. He and my daughter are of the same age. Often I am amazed by his punctuality. He announces his arrival sharp at 8 am with the reverberating sound of his trumpet. My elegantly dressed-up little angel, ready to leave for her school, prances towards the shabbily-clad boy to buy her balloons.
For the winter vacation, my daughter planned to spend a few days at her grandmother’s house. Fortunately our winter vacations coincided and I was delighted at the prospect of enjoying sleep till late in the morning hours for the next ten days, as I didn’t have to drop my daughter at school. But perhaps there were no holidays in the balloon seller’s school.
He announced his arrival with the characteristic sound of his trumpet. As my daughter had gone out of the town, there was no necessity to buy the balloons. Finding no response from our side, the sounds from his trumpet grew louder and louder and louder. Now it was my duty to inform the boy that her customer was not home. The boy was huffing and puffing but kept blowing harder and harder till I told him about my daughter’s whereabouts. I could clearly view the disappointment in his eyes. He walked past without uttering any word of complaint.
For the next few days, it was quiet in the morning. Four days later, the trumpet was back. Though my daughter had not arrived yet, I did not want to read the same story of sorrow in the boy’s eyes again. I decided to keep buying a balloon everyday. Now the vacation is over. The punctuality of the boy, the sound of his trumpet and my daughter’s delight in getting her balloon are going in perfect order. But is this order we wish to see in our world? Like our children, this boy should also go to school. But perhaps like some over-optimistic poet I am dreaming of utopia. Unfortunately ours is a wicked world where one child buys the balloons and the other sells.
Shiv Sethi
Email: shiv.sethi@ymail.com