Stories that Matter

I have special respect for people who struggle through unexpected odd events of life and fight for survival. Their work motivation during troubled times and turmoil of life are definitely encouraging for others. Story of a female vegetable vendor, sitting at road side in Sixmile, Guwahati is something worth inspiring. She is the lone woman vendor in that part of the market and belongs to Muslim community, carrying out her business with all male colleagues around. What brought you to this place?, I asked. She smiled. Probably felt shy to answer me. ‘My husband met a heavy loss in the business ten years back. I took over and running successfully till now’. She smiled again.  A lone woman selling vegetables in the midst of all male market, is still unthinkable in this area. This woman changed the traditional gender roles and became bread winner for the family of three children. ‘My husband looks after the household things and I run the business. He has no complaint as I took

One short story touched my heart today.  It’s a Bengali short story written by Banaphool titled, ‘Chotolok’. “Chotolok’ means the subaltern working class here in the story. The story is only pages long and talks about two men : one passerby and a manual rikshaw puller. Raghab is a  enlightened man with knowledge of labour exploitation and subaltern studies, believes that manual rikshaw pulling is worst kind of discrimination and labour exploitation he ever witnessed. The rikshaw puller started following while he was walking briskly to cover a short distance in scorching sun. Raghab thought this worst kind of labour of rickshaw pulling must be the only livelihood option for this man. He negotiated his ideology for a short distance. He hired the rikshaw but didn’t sit on it and was walking side by side despite several requests from the rikshaw puller to be seated in the cart. How can Raghab sit? He has studied the great labour movements: division of labour, Bolshevism, factory labour a