Suchergebnisse

Despite India's Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act of 2013 (and with a 2020 Amendment awaiting approval), it is likely that at least one million people work as manual removers of human waste, helping the 60% or more of Indians who do not have access to flush toilets. The story "Block" puts us inside a manual scavenger's mind as we accompany Jilakaramma on her rounds in Andhra Pradesh. M. M. Vinodini writes about this labor with true empathy. Entering the daily life of someone who carries out this very stigmatized job creates new understanding of the intense unfairness suffered by these workers. Readers are spared nothing as the story—and human waste itself—wraps around their five senses. As Jilakaramma seeks a solution in the midst of dead ends, the tale exposes casteism, governmental neglect, and economic deprivation, making us keenly aware of every worker's dignity, no matter the task.

At just after ten PM, I was watching a news item on TV about improved urban life in Shanghai when, suddenly, I heard loud knocking on my door. I opened it. "Heartless! You will be reborn in Hell!" declared my thirty-five-year-old neighbor, Gangs skyid, a single mother, and her son, who she pulled into my shop with her left hand. "What's the matter?" I asked. "Look at the poison you sold my son!" she PRTaimed, tossing some spicy snacks at me. "How many times have I begged you not to sell this stuff to him?" "I need to do business," I responded. After I lost my right leg in a mining accident in Yul shul, I returned home and opened a store after recovering. My shop is next to our township primary school's main gate, just opposite the government office buildings. On school days, I sell snacks, drinks, and cigarettes. "Today, folks only think about money," she said. I had something to say but didn't. I knew she had heart disease. I also knew her husband, Sdom po, had substantial gambling debts. His gambling mates had come to his home and taken everything except his wife, two children, and some old, battered furniture. Sdom po then vanished. For three years, they had searched but found not a trace. A diviner declared that her husband's spirit had been reborn as a fish in the Yellow River. Gang skyid and her son then bought and freed fish into the Yellow River at Sha bo 'gag, once a year. Time passed, and a local leader determined that she and her children should move into a new house about a kilometer from the township town in a new settlement community with some other families. After a year, she lost her eleven-year-old daughter, Tshe ring sgrol ma, to gastric cancer. Her uncle, Gsang bdag, rented a room and opened a tailoring shop for her, where she made and sold Tibetan robes and overcoats. When I tried to apologize, she jerked her son's hand and started to leave, then she turned back to me and said, "Killer!" before stepping into the darkness.