Perhaps many of us have played ghar-ghar (in this game we pretend to be old and act like running a household by playing different roles) in our childhood. I played this game a lot in my early childhood days with my brother, cousins, and friends. When we used to play, we used to make up a story using the things available at home. But whatever story we made, we used to get suitable things for the game. There are many versions of this game from house to house. Like doctor-doctor, police-police, kitchen-kitchen, and many more. We played roles of police, doctor, engineer, driver, chef, and don’t know what more in our childhood while playing this game.
Whenever we go to a fair, toy shops are loaded with toy sets that can be used to play ghar-ghar. A doctor’s set comes with a stethoscope, a syringe, a BP measuring machine, etc. One such famous set is the kitchen set, which almost all our female friends had. Obviously, everything is fake. But it definitely costs money.
Now we don’t play ghar-ghar anymore. Maybe after one age, no one would play. But one has to go to college. And the Bangalore City Project was given to us by our college, in which the topic of our group was Urban Poor. So we went to the settlement of waste-pickers, who had migrated to Bangalore from rural West Bengal. Now it is obvious that if there is a settlement, there will be families living there, and children living in the families.
Many children in the slum are of the age when they play ghar-ghar. But, the families living in these slums of course do not have money to buy these expensive sets from the market. The parents of these children work as domestic help and collect garbage.
These children find and keep the items suitable for them to play ghar-ghar from the garbage. These children play the game without spending any money and are happy.
It’s just that they don’t have pucca houses of their own, and the people living in the buildings opposite their settlement will not allow that to happen too. Because then no one from these slums will go to clean their palaces, and seeing their children playing with toys, they will not be able to feel the sorrow of not being able to give toys to their children. Seeing these children playing, I remembered playing at home.
This girl is making parathas, her sister is helping her, and that boy is selling vegetables at the back. They are happy that their parents brought them toys.
Thanks to Sushant Bhai, PhD Scholar, IIA, for help with the field work. Thanks also to Late Comrade Rohit Bhaiya and Sachin Bhaiya for their guidance in the project.
(In the loving memory of Comrade Rohit Bisht, who did a lot of work with many other people in these slums, and many other places.)
