South Chennai has a fascinating lane called Anna Street, ‘Anna’ being an abbreviation of Annadurai, the charismatic scholar-leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the first non-Congress chief minister of Tamil Nadu (or Madras as the state was called before he had it renamed Tamil Nadu) post-Independence. Anna Street is not to be confused with the grand Anna Salai, as Mount Road has been called now, for decades, again commemorating the late leader. I go through this street almost every day for my home, just beyond one end of it, is to be reached most conveniently by passing through this street.
Conveniently. Convenience. That is what my type of person is obsessed with. Stay un-hassled, un-impeded. Get there where you want to, easily, comfortably.
And every time I do so — or anyone does — Anna Street shows almost every conceivable scene from existence. Weddings (frequent), funerals (even more frequent), laughter (constant), lamentation (regular), anger (occasional), scuffles (rare), business (brisk), incredible enterprise, ranging from carpentry, laundry, motor-mechanics, smithy, bakery, tailoring to even antique-selling, musical-instruments repairing, traffic (unimaginably thick), cattle (confident, numerous), dogs (contented, even more numerous), the elderly (many, invariably walking with courage alone but not forlorn), the young (in great spirits), beggars (few), old women selling small stuff to eat spread on a rag (many, and totally happy). And the normal quantity of garbage of course.
I had always thought if I have not seen or heard something from life on Anna Street, it either does not exist or is not important. But today I did. Today I saw something which made me ashamed of our milieu and even more ashamed of myself.
It happened like this. I was in a rush — typical of car-types — to get home in time to receive a visitor. And so I was keen to get on with the journey through this forever-crowded street. There was nothing happening on the street that could catch my attention for I had seen it all, times without number. But then something did catch my attention. At first, my mind said, ‘Oh, how sweet.’ I saw a girl not more than, I would say, five or six years of age, with her back towards my car, dancing in great joy. This was what I first saw and what, at first, I felt in the first two seconds. In the third second, I felt there was something not right about what I was seeing, something decidedly wrong. I did not like the way the child was dancing. That was not the way a child would dance. There was something about the way she was swinging that was... I need not say more. The car was getting closer and closer to her — let me name her Roja (rose) — as I was seeing and thinking all this. As I drew nearer, the dancing became more and more like what I thought was not right. As the car levelled up with the dancing, swaying Roja, I could hear, through the closed windows and the air-conditioned sealing, the sound of a drum beating fast. And then I saw the back of a woman, seated on the road, drumming. The next moment I had crossed the drumming woman and Roja. And as I did, I cursed everything, society, our times, our poverty and, almost instantly, I cursed myself. I was a prisoner of my appointment. I could not stop. I should have stopped and got out of the car to see, to ask, what exactly was happening, why a woman, perhaps Roja’s mother or perhaps not her mother but someone else, was making her dance in the middle of the road in a way she could not have realized was lewd. I should have sent word over the phone to someone in authority or called a Child Helpline.
I looked around from my careering car to see if there was any policeman around to whom I could have said, ‘Please, constable-Sir, there is this... child... dancing... just see if she is safe...’ but as it happened there was no constable to be seen at that point. I was home in minutes, in perfect time for my visitor, and was soon engrossed in conversation, discussing the state of the nation, socialism, secularism, democracy, freedom of thought and expression, satyagrahas, Covid, of course... and... while this little Roja was dancing... to the beats of a drum that was creating a kind of music that is not music and for a dance that is not dance.
And an irony burnt itself into my mind: Roja was just a hundred yards away from the great and celebrated school of dance and music established on the same street by the amazing Rukmini Devi — Kalakshetra. Renowned dancers and dance-gurus have emerged from Kalakshetra, and will continue to do so, setting the gold standard for classical dance, Bharatanatyam above all else.
Perhaps — who knows? — Roja will one day join Kalakshetra to learn dance and her guardian-drummer, seated in the front row, will watch her entranced, in awe. Perhaps.
And I recalled two headlines from that very morning’s newspapers:
1. Cabinet nod to raise girls’ marriage age to 21.
2. Class 12 girl identifies coins dating back to the 12th century.
Lawmakers can make a huge difference. But let us recall that the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, better known after its initiator, Har Bilas Sharda, as the Sharda Act, fixing the age of marriage for girls at 14 and boys at 18, was opposed in the Imperial Legislative Council of India by many worthies whose names would shock us today. Sharda stood his ground against callousness, cynicism, orthodoxy and sheer bull-headedness.
But opportunity, safety, education and, of course, the good luck of guarding, shepherding, helping hands can convert — alchemize — vulnerability into creativity and genius.
The All India Women’s Conference, Women’s Indian Association and National Council of Women in India had catalyzed the movement for raising the age for marriage and consent before the Sharda Act. And it is the recommendation of a panel headed by Jaya Jaitly that has now led to the decision about raising the age level to 21. All honour to that panel.
The legal age of marriage being settled by law is one thing; the reality of daily life is another. We have a National Commission for Women and every state and Union territory has a State Commission for Women. Their work needs to be recognized. But more, they need to become dynamos of restless energy, of impatience with the status quo. They need to chastise those who drive through the streets of India, car-windows raised, even as the drum beats to a dance that should not be danced by Roja. They need to help her know the law pertaining to her rights and to fight to see they are implemented. This they can only do if they are truly autonomous, unafraid of both State and society, motivated by just one thing — Har Bilas Sharda’s zeal for change.
