Lighting Candles
"Child labor" is often one of the first things Westerners, especially those of us with a liberal bias, associate with India. Images of small children working long hours in sweatshops that manufacture athletic shoes for multi-national corporations come to mind. The truth is, most of the hundreds of thousands of children who work in India do much simpler chores. They run chai down the street for their uncle who owns a tea shop. They help their mothers collect cow dung and mold it into patties (used for cooking and heating) that are then sold to the neighbors. They sell post cards in the streets to tourists, as Sreenu himself did when he was the age of twelve. The boy in these photos moved through our lives so quickly he will forever remain anonymous. He sells small candles for five rupees each (about a dime), that are used by pilgrims in Varanasi to cast with prayers into the river Ganges. As Sreenu and I took a late evening boat ride from ghat to ghat, this boy hopped unannounced into our boat, sold us a few candles, and hopped out again. In so many ways he typifies the truth of child labor in this country. The money he earns will surely go to help his family survive. Having lived in India for an extended period of time, seeing small children working no longer holds any surprise. In ways I've come to accept it as a part of this culture. To be honest, I now feel more shock and disgust at the pampered teens I encounter back in the U.S.A., who, pushing twenty, have never worked a day in their lives. My perspective has changed, and the "child labor" of India now seems quite normal. It is a complex issue that revolves around education, poverty level, and family and societal responsibility. It would be nice to live in a world without poverty. In the meantime we light candles. The day after these photos were taken I returned early in the morning to the Ganga, bought one hundred candles, and had them floated in the early light of dawn.
