A scribe’s perusal of an uncanny bonhomie in a Budgam borough ended up unearthing a bizarre case of a trafficked childhood.
By Sadaf Shabir
In a balmy summer day in 2019, eleven-year-old Nazish insisted her father to take her to his office. For a change, the ‘cry baby’ wanted to stay with his beloved parent. She had prepared her mind-list for the day and was looking forward to explore the new place.
Her father’s workplace—a water tank in central Kashmir’s Budgam district—and its surroundings felt home to her. She saw a new government apartment nearby getting a finishing touch. It housed a family. Picturing the life inside that apartment, she didn’t pay any attention to her father’s frenetic calls.
After sometime, her father held her right hand, and walked her to that apartment. The familiarity at once surfaced to Nazish, when her father and a female inmate exchanged warm greetings and big smiles.
Inside that house, the little girl felt being pampered. Shy and reticent, she stood coy and quiet. Looking around, she spotted a little, dark-skinned girl—of her age—working at one corner of the living room.
The sight set her thinking.
The apartment belonged to an engineer who was living there with his wife and two sons.
Almost half an hour after their arrival in that apartment, the woman of the house turned towards Nazish: “Why don’t you take Reshma to your seminary from tomorrow, so she could also learn Quran?”
Reshma was the same ‘little, brown-skinned’ girl whom Nazish had spotted working in that apartment.
Days passed and the two little girls eagerly looked for each other’s company to attend Quranic sessions at a local seminary in Budgam. Nazish became very close to Reshma. The two developed a sturdy emotional bond just in a few days.
Then one evening, Nazish was seen crying her heart out inside her home. It was a late evening and the streets outside wore ghostly looks.
In that dark and dismal hour, Nazish was seeking Reshma’s company very badly.
Friendship was fine, her family thought amid the unrelenting wailing and howling of the little girl, but seeking a fresh friend amid desolation outside was something which unsettled everyone, especially Nazish’s father.
The word spread and became a new gossip in the village. That PHE employer’s crying child was seeking the company of a young brown girl in one late evening created quite a buzz.
For any scribe or storyteller, it didn’t qualify for a story. But soon, behind the uncanny bonhomie, I unearthed one of the crudest, and perhaps, rudest tragedy of human lives, caught in terrible circumstances.
A casual visit next day took me to my friend’s home, sited at a short distance from the government apartment. This is where I got to know that Reshma was a ‘paid housekeeper’.
The friend’s assertion did deflate the larger impression among the villagers about Reshma—whom she knew as a niece to a lady inmate living in that apartment.
It was perhaps now a shut and sorted matter for many, who thought that the young girl was just a routine non-local domestic help in a Kashmiri household.
But a little more fact-finding revealed that there was more to it than what met an eye.
To understand the case of the budding friendship, a few days later, I met the ‘cry baby’.
Nazish was only one in the whole village whom Reshma trusted and perhaps was her secret-keeper as well.
As expected, the little girl showed a bundle of nerves and foot-dragging when the case of her friend came up for discussion.
But once the initial hesitance waned, she was soon portraying a disturbing picture of her friend from some faraway land.
“Except cooking food, Reshma does everything,” Nazish told me, with her sorrowed face and downcast eyes. “She washes clothes, brooms the whole apartment. Her aunt doesn’t give her money to buy something to eat.”
“But why were you crying that evening while seeking Reshma’s company?”
“They had left Reshma alone at home that evening,” she replied. “So I couldn’t make peace with it. Anything could’ve happened to her. And therefore, when I couldn’t take it anymore, I cried and told my father to bring her home. He agreed and she spent that night at our place.”
Nazish’s assertions and revelations about her friend made it clear that Reshma was a child labour living under miserable conditions.
As per the 2011 All-India census, there’re close to 10.1 million child laborers in India alone in the age group of 5 to 14 years.
Despite framing several laws, New Delhi has failed miserably to stop child labour across India.
With the result, the likes of Reshma continue to lose their childhood to the largely overlooked ‘smuggled innocence’ cartel.
One such tragedy-torn story of the juvenile workforce in my backyard soon put me on an exploration trip.
Next two days, I waited to talk to Reshma to know more about her story. I had many queries in mind—most importantly: how did she end up in that house at such a young age?
Luckily after two days, Reshma came to our neighbour’s house on a casual visit. I met her there to do some talking. She was trying to hide her miseries behind a beautiful smile.
“Who’s that lady with whom you live?”
“She’s my aunt,” she replied.
“Is she your father’s sister?”
Lowering her down, she said, “No, I just call her aunty but I don’t know her. We don’t have any relation in Kashmir.”
Reshma said that she basically belongs to Uttar Pradesh, but her family currently lives in Jammu. Her father’s leg is defected so he can’t work.
“We’re seven siblings,” she continued to narrate her wretched account. “Our mother used to work somewhere, but I don’t know what kind of work she’s doing. One of my sisters manages home. My elder brother is working in Mumbai.”
One day, the ‘little, brown-skinned girl’ continued, a Jammu-based landlord came and introduced her father with her ‘aunty’.
“Then my mother told me that I’m going with her to work [in Kashmir],” Reshma said, with a mournful face. “I cried a lot, protesting: ‘I don’t want to go!’ But they brought me here forcibly. And now I’m working here. They send money to my parents every month and bring me clothes but I want to go back to my family.”
Away from the family, Reshma had finally found some meaningful companion in Nazish. Being sent as domestic help by her family had derailed her desire to study. But with Nazish, Reshma had started picking up the lost threads of study.
“I never went to any school but I want to study,” she said with a long face. “But now, it feels it will remain a dream forever. I’ve to work for my family with whom I haven’t talked from last two months. They don’t even let me to call them now. I miss them a lot.”
“But why your parents let your ‘aunty’ to take you away?” I asked Reshma, on a parting note.
“They were tired of me,” she said with tearful eyes.
