CHENNAI: Roses wither and fall, but the thorns remain. Mallesh Badrappa is an allegory of this thorn, having endured 15 years at a fragrant rose farm as a bonded labourer. When Mallesh was sold as a ‘slave’ to a rose farm owner, he was six.
After grazing cattle for almost six years, he stepped into the prickly landscape of lush, fragrant rose bushes. His work entailed plucking 1,500 roses every two days, braving the thorns encapsulating delicate flowers, his bleeding hands waiting to grab his square meal. But, not any longer.
Today, at 21 years, Mallesh is attending online classes after having enrolled in the Bachelors of Social Work (BSW) course in Madras Christian College. Mallesh tells The New Indian Express, how education has helped him climb out of the bondage and has empowered him to make his own choices.
“The scars from the rose thorns did not disappear even a year after I was rescued from the farm. I knew that studying was the only way to escape those scars for good,” he said.
Mallesh’s parents died when he was two weeks old. He knows little about his parents’ death and even less about their lives. His older siblings ostracised him and blamed him for their parents' demise. "When I finished Class 1, my brother and my aunt sent me to a rose farm in Krishnagiri," he said.
His day started early as he untied a pair of cows and grazed them along the way to a tea shop, where he was allowed to drink tea every morning. "Pulling out weeds, cleaning, de-silting, and silting irrigation paths in the farm was also my job," he said.
Mallesh recalled that the owner’s children used to go to a private school, but it never once occurred to him that he should too. "When I was 12 years old, my brother fought with my owner and sold me to another rose farmer in the same district," he said. Mallesh had to pluck 50 tubs of roses every alternate day and still received no pay.
The only concrete memory he has from that period of his life is the injuries and the bleeding he endured from rose thorns. "The owner gave us gloves. The thorns would pierce me even through that," Mallesh rued.
But there was hope for him when the District Collector showed up at his farm in 2013. "The Collector asked me if I will study, I said yes," Mallesh said, pointing out that his life had changed ever since.
After being rescued from being a bonded labourer, he was enrolled in a government residential school in class 6 by K Venugopal, a social worker from International Justice Mission, even though he was older than his peers.
“The school asked me to leave after Class 8 as they were ‘sure’ I would fail public exams. When I moved schools, everybody teased me and I felt very isolated. Teachers did not like me, I couldn’t study and I was not like others. I changed school again for Class 10,” he said. However, teachers in this government residential school in Rayakottai, Krishnagiri, encouraged him like his own parents would have.
"I failed every exam till the revisions, but then I passed the revision exam. My teachers told everybody I knew that I would pass finals. And I did," he beamed. He passed Class 12 as well, and enrolled for Bachelors of Social Work at Madras Christian College, where he attends online classes now.
Mallesh aspires to be a Collector and wants to work towards ending child labour. "Even though I learned a lot from every step of my journey, nobody should go through what I did," he said. Mallesh adds that from time-to-time, he buys a rose, looks at it for hours and recalls his childhood. "Life is not what is beautiful. It is what you make beautiful of it," he says.