“Taleem Child Labour kay khilaaf aik mo’ssar hathyar hai” was the theme of the city-wide speech and poster competition organized by SPARC – Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child. Perhaps because the email sent to me stated the theme as “Education is a tool to end Child Labour” and perhaps because the venue of the event was the Defence Library, I had not imagined it to be a government school event where the lingua franca was to be Urdu. So I walked cluelessly in to the sea of blue and white uniforms with hair cut short and without a dupatta to be hit in the gut with a tidal rush of guilt. I could see how I would be perceived: a flaky aunty who watches from a safe distance and doesn’t get her hands dirty. Horrid!
For some reason I had not realized how many government schools there are in Karachi. Perhaps because I’ve been so enmeshed in the upper echelon of private schools lately that in my mind, government schools had just ceased to exist. That was when I realized why it was imperative for this event to be a government school affair. The children who went to these schools were maids’ children, drivers’ children, gardeners’ children, watchmen’s children. They were children who were likely to have to leave school halfway to help their parents with their financial responsibilities. They were likely to live in neighbourhoods where they may be friends with children who go to mechanics’ workshops and bricklayers’ kilns instead of going to school. I understood then that SPARC had it right: through this exercise, it was seeking to educate and empower the very children who were susceptible to abuse instead of going the elitist NGO route of raising awareness among the unaffected affluent circles.
The event made me think that my time spent on the other side of town is straining my ties with reality. This may be the bane of the middle class, we apparently have no time for causes because “my first responsibility is to ensure my children get the very best in life and hence I must be consumed ensuring that is the case. Everyone struggles; if they struggle, I do too, what’s the difference?” How does one transcend the cycle?
I am professedly Marxist: I believe in abolishing class privilege and yet I can’t forgo the comforts of my privilege. I hate shopping at Tariq Road and am the first to rub my status in the face of the “low life rat’s ass of an accountant” at the office who dares think he can hit on me. Hypocritical and horrid! I think it’s more complicated than that though. Gender is the additional variable which prevents me from forgoing class distinction simply because as one goes lower down on the socio-economic ladder, gender imbalance increases and roles become more defined. I could make myself live on meagre rations but I could not never stand to be reduced to the lower middle income bracket’s definition of being a woman. What does that make me though? Intellectually Marxist and practically elitist?
