19 December 2009 BOYS WITHOUT NAMES by Kashmira Sheth, Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins, January 2010, 320p., ISBN: 978-0-06-185760-7
"Slavery is not dead."
-- U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking
"When I reach home, I'm out of breath. Aai is folding clothes. 'The boy I met yesterday, Jatin -- he's here. He can give me a job in his uncle's factory. I am going with him. I'll be back soon.'
"'We don't know him. You should wait until you talk to Jama tonight.
"'Jatin is going to leave in two minutes. This is my chance, Aai. I have to go. Here, take this notebook and pencil.'
"'You can't go, Gopal. It looks like rain, and listen -- "
"'He is waiting. I'll go tell him I can't go and be right back.'
"I grab the blue raincoat hanging from a nail by the front door and run out.
"'Savadhan!' Aai tells me to be careful.
"Jatin is sipping tea and there is another full cup on a wooden table. He moves it toward me. 'For you.'
"'I though you were in a hurry.'
"He gives a shrill laugh. 'One must always make time for chai Have some.'
"As soon as I drink a few sips, Jatin gets up. 'Let's go,' he says.
"I am lightheaded. Jatin, the cups, the stall all float around me. I wobble along with him. The footpath seems to rise up to meet me. 'I...I can't go with you. My aai doesn't want me to,' I say.
"'Come now.' He waves his hand. 'Taxi!'
"'But...'
"He puts his arm around me. A taxi stops. Before I know it, I am in the backseat. I close my eyes.
"Then darkness takes me."
Eleven year-old Gopal is the eldest child in a poor, rural Indian family. Having borrowed from the moneylender after an abundant onion harvest brought meager prices for their crop, Gopal's parents were eventually forced to sell their small farm in order to pay down the accruing interest. Nevertheless, the family has continued to slowly starve while their debt has continued to grow.
Now, having been given some money by Gopal's maternal uncle Jama, Gopal's baba [father] decides that the family must take advantage of the opportunity to sneak away from their village and head by train to the city of Mumbai where Jama lives. But a horrific series of missteps leaves Gopal's father missing, and Gopal feeling compelled to earn some money for the family. Thus it is that the boy falls prey, and is kidnapped and sold into slavery.
Gopal finds himself imprisoned with five other boys in the attic of a house maintained by the man whom Gopal nicknames Scar. The boys are forced to glue beads on frames all day in silence while being provided little food, no exercise, and routine beatings. Scar utilizes a variety of psychological strategies designed to keep the boys constantly suspicious and fearful of one another so that they will not unite.
"Aai used to say, 'Kahanis [stories] are your best friends because they never leave you.'"
In seeking to maintain his sanity and his will to escape his enslavement, Gopal inadvertently learns the power of story to bring comfort to and eventually win over the confidences of his fellow captives.
This story about story has me recalling why it is that I so dearly love sharing books, why I so often seek out and always enjoy hearing other people's stories, and why I get such a kick out of telling my own. Stories offer us the hope of unlimited possibilities, the chance to glean the wisdom of the past, and the comfort of recognizing that we are all more alike than we are different. It is thanks to my getting to listen to and read such a wealth of stories as a child that I grew up with a tendency to embrace the multitude of colors and flavors and beliefs that I encounter. This is the reason why we find such value and developmental importance in multicultural children's literature.
"We must stick together. We are like a family. Sahil's and Amar's words swirl in my head. We stay together and we are connected, not only by our work and our imprisonment in this place, but also by our stories and our feelings. If we can comfort one another, we can be a family."
What I hope is also recognized is that in experiencing a story like BOYS WITHOUT NAMES and coming to understand what is going on outside one's own neighborhood, we are offered the opportunity to become more mindful and avoid becoming unwitting accomplices to what causes others suffering. I have heard about human trafficking and coerced child labor, but have not paid nearly enough attention. To think that something I might purchase may have been crafted in the sort of conditions encountered in Gopal's story, that my dollars might help perpetuate such crimes against someone's child -- a child who is sitting in an attic at this very moment -- is something that certainly requires more of my diligence. We must remember that just as we are all more alike than we are different, it is equally true that any one of us or our own children could have easily been born into Gopal's situation, a situation which our government reminds us is all too real today.
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