Lost Spring

Anees Jung's chapter is an extract from her book Lost Spring: Stories of Stolen Childhood, and it is reportage rather than fiction. That matters for the exam: the people are real, the narrator is the author herself, and the tone is that of a witness who is aware she can do very little.

The chapter has two parts, each about one child.

The narrator meets Saheb, a boy who scrounges through rubbish heaps in her neighbourhood. His full name, Saheb-e-Alam, means lord of the universe — a name the chapter sets against the reality of a barefoot child picking through refuse.

Saheb's family came from Dhaka, in Bangladesh, where storms swept away their fields and homes. They now live in Seemapuri, on the periphery of Delhi — a settlement of mud structures with roofs of tin and tarpaulin, without sewage, drainage or running water. About ten thousand ragpickers live there. They have lived there for more than thirty years without permits, but they have ration cards, which get their names on voting lists and let them buy grain. As one woman tells the narrator, food is more important for survival than an identity.

The narrator asks, half-seriously, why Saheb does not go to school, and he says there is no school in his neighbourhood. She then says that if she starts a school, will he come — and he says yes. Days later he asks whether her school is ready. She is ashamed: she had made a promise that was not meant. 'Promises like mine abound in every corner of their bleak world,' she writes.

She observes that garbage to the children is gold — it is their daily bread and a roof over their heads, and it is wrapped in wonder, because a rupee or a ten-rupee note may appear in it. To the adults it is a means of survival; to the children it is something more.

Later she finds Saheb working at a tea stall down the road. He earns 800 rupees and all his meals. But she notes that his face has lost its carefree look: the steel canister seems heavier than his plastic bag. He is no longer his own master.

The second part moves to Firozabad, the centre of India's glass-blowing industry, where families have made bangles for generations. Around 20,000 children work in the glass furnaces, in high temperatures, in dingy cells without air and light, welding pieces of coloured glass. Many lose the brightness of their eyes before they are adults; the narrator meets a woman whose husband went blind with the dust from polishing bangles.

She visits Mukesh's home — a half-built shack, part of it thatched with dead grass, with a firewood stove over which sizzles a stew of spinach leaves and potatoes. Mukesh's father is a poor bangle-maker who has failed to renovate the house or send his sons to school; his grandmother says that this is the destiny of the caste they are born into. Around them, Savita, a young girl in a drab pink dress, solders pieces of glass, unaware of the sanctity of the bangles she helps make.

The narrator identifies two distinct worlds holding the families in place: one, the family caught in a web of poverty and burdened by the stigma of caste; the other, a vicious circle of sahukars, middlemen, policemen, keepers of law, bureaucrats and politicians. Together these have imposed a burden the child cannot put down. Even organising into a cooperative is impossible: if they do, they say, they will be hauled up by the police, beaten and dragged to jail for doing something illegal. There is no leader among them, no one who can help them see things differently.

Against all this, Mukesh insists that he will be a motor mechanic. He will go to a garage and learn. When told the garage is far away, he says he will walk. The narrator notes that he is the only one in Firozabad who has dared to dream of something outside the family trade, and that his dream is modest — not to fly a plane, only to drive a car.

Saheb is presented first as a child of the streets — barefoot, curious, and free in the limited way that having nothing allows. The narrator notes that he and his friends go barefoot not by choice but from poverty, though she also records the explanation that it is a tradition, and dismisses it: it is 'a perpetual state of poverty' dressed up as an excuse.

He is capable of wonder. Garbage is not merely survival to him — a coin might appear in it. He plays at the gate of a club where he watches two young men playing tennis, and wears discarded tennis shoes with a hole in one of them, which he does not mind: 'shoes are a dream'.

His fate is the chapter's most quietly devastating turn. Employed at the tea stall, he is better fed and less free. The narrator's image — the steel canister heavier than the plastic bag — measures exactly what the wage has cost.

Mukesh is the chapter's one point of resistance. Everyone around him accepts that bangle-making is destiny; his grandmother calls it the karma of their caste. Mukesh says plainly that he wants to be a motor mechanic.

Two details make him convincing. First, his dream is small and practical — cars, not aeroplanes, and a garage rather than an education. Second, he has already thought about the obstacle: told the garage is far, he says he will walk. That is the whole extent of his plan, and it is more than anyone else in Firozabad has.

Anees Jung writes herself into the chapter as someone who cannot fix any of it. She asks questions, records answers, and admits the failure of her one intervention — the school she never opened. This honesty is what stops the chapter becoming charitable in tone.

Mukesh's grandmother, whose husband went blind polishing bangles, states the fatalism the chapter is arguing against: this is what has been ordained. Savita, soldering glass in a drab pink dress, is shown as not yet knowing that the bangles she makes signify marriage — a girl making the symbol of a life she has not reached.

The title supplies the theme. Spring stands for childhood — the season of growth that these children do not get. Saheb and Mukesh are not merely poor; they are working, and the work has replaced the part of life in which a person becomes something.

This distinction is the chapter's real argument, and it is what separates a strong answer from a weak one. The families are poor, but poverty alone would not be inescapable. What makes it inescapable is the system built around them: sahukars who lend, middlemen who buy cheap, police who prevent organisation, and officials who do nothing.

The narrator makes this explicit when she explains why the bangle-makers cannot form a cooperative — they fear being beaten and jailed for doing something 'illegal'. The point is that the exit exists in theory and is closed in practice.

The most difficult obstacle in the chapter is not economic but mental. The grandmother's line about the karma of the caste, and the fact that no one among them has ever dared to think of another trade, is presented as more binding than the debt. It is why Mukesh matters: not because his plan is good, but because he has imagined an alternative at all.

Seemapuri's residents have exchanged one kind of security for another. They left Dhaka because storms destroyed their homes; in Delhi they have no permits but do have ration cards. The line food is more important for survival than an identity states the trade plainly, and it applies to the whole settlement.

The narrator's broken promise is not an accident of the writing — it is part of the argument. Well-meaning individual gestures do not touch a structural problem, and the chapter is careful to show its own author failing at exactly that.

The structure is deliberately doubled: two cities, two children, two trades. Saheb's story shows a child without an inherited occupation, surviving on refuse; Mukesh's shows a child with one, bound to it by generations. Together they cover both ways a childhood can be taken, which is why the chapter needs both halves.

The first-person narrator is the author. She reports conversations, describes what she sees, and includes her own discomfort. Because it is non-fiction, the figures matter — ten thousand ragpickers, twenty thousand children, thirty years without permits, 800 rupees — and examiners expect them.

The chapter's sharpest effects come from juxtaposition rather than comment:

• Saheb-e-Alam, 'lord of the universe', picking through garbage.
• Firozabad, where bangles signify marriage and prosperity, worked by families who cannot afford a proper house.
• The steel canister against the plastic bag — a promotion that is also a loss.
• The tennis shoes with a hole, discarded by someone for whom they were disposable.

'Garbage to them is gold' is the chapter's controlling metaphor. Seemapuri is described as being on the periphery of Delhi 'yet miles away from it, metaphorically', which does the political work of the sentence in one phrase.

The tone is restrained. Jung does not editorialise heavily or appeal to pity; she reports, quotes and occasionally allows herself a flat observation. The absence of outrage in the prose is what gives the details their force.

• The two worlds of Firozabad — name both and explain how they combine.
• Saheb's condition before and after the tea stall — whether his life improved.
• Mukesh as an exception — why his dream matters.
• The irony of the title, or of Saheb's name.
• The narrator's broken promise — what it reveals.

Weak answers say the children are poor. Strong answers say the children are trapped, and explain the machinery: the sahukars and middlemen who take the profit, the police and officials who prevent organisation, and the fatalism that stops anyone imagining an exit. The chapter gives you all three; use them.

The expected answer is not that Saheb's life improved. He eats better and earns 800 rupees, and he has lost his freedom — the canister belongs to the owner, and 'he is no longer his own master'. Say both halves, and use the canister-versus-bag image, which is the sentence the question is usually built around.

10,000 ragpickers in Seemapuri; 20,000 children in Firozabad; thirty years without permits; 800 rupees and all his meals. Phrases: 'garbage to them is gold'; 'food is more important for survival than an identity'; 'Promises like mine abound in every corner of their bleak world'; 'I want to be a motor mechanic'.

• Treating it as fiction. It is reportage; the narrator is the author.
• Saying the tea stall rescued Saheb. The text says the opposite about his freedom.
• Blaming only poverty and omitting the middlemen, police and officials.
• Confusing the two cities — Saheb is Seemapuri and rags; Mukesh is Firozabad and bangles.
• Making Mukesh's dream grand. Its modesty is the point.