[Reader-list] [Fwd: Avinash Post No.1]

[Vivek Narayanan]

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SARAI POST 1 - Avinash Kumar

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Its amazing how you always see a Jhoolewala when you aren’t looking for 
them. So it seems like they have all disappeared though I have been 
doing the rounds of the colonies every evening now.

One evening, I finally turn a corner and there he is! I introduce 
myself, and as we walk together, I try to explain the project to him 
above the din of the contraption itself. He is very amused (just as I 
had expected), especially when I tell him I want to push the Jhoola 
myself one of these days.

The path of the Jhoola immediately brings out the conflicts between the 
Jhoola and the City. Bleating horns, irate pedestrians, and impatient 
scooters welcome the Jhoolewala as he snakes through the traffic. The 
summer holidays are on, and he tells me he has to plan out his times 
according to the season and school timings. My conversation with him 
reveals the interesting insights he has on modern children, their 
mothers and their maids. (More on the actual experience of the Jhoola 
and children later)

We walk back to his home after an unprofitable evening for him, so he is 
no mood to engage in our project talk. I meet his sons and cousins and 
nephews, some of whom are also engaged in the same business, but have 
taken a departure from the traditional job of pushing the Jhoolas. 
Instead, they rent out the Jhoolas for birthday parties and carnivals, 
transporting them by tempo and plying them at the party (or /palti/, as 
they might say). On being informed that this is the regular practice in 
the younger Jhoolewalas, I think about how the Jhoola is losing its 
wheels, and ironically going further, from the level of the locality, to 
the level of the city. All you need is the mobile number of the 
‘manager’, and the Jhoola is at your doorstep. I am not so sure at this 
stage if that is a good thing or not, so I will wait out my thoughts on 
that one.

Further conversations with the family (and friends who have by now 
accumulated) reveal how it is only the old man who still continues to 
push the Jhoola in the colony – he says that’s all he knows. I try again 
to explain the project to them, and realize the need to really figure 
out methods to do just that.

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