The other day i was reading aloud to a 25 yr old partially blind rural born and brought up young woman, herB'ed lesson's sitting under the shade of a clump of trees in the vast ground of a chari table organisation [sylvan sorroundings in the heart of our bustling city] when a tiny kitten brushed against our feet at which she jumped up and said 'M'am chase it away otherwise it will give us asthma'.
I didn't have the heart to do so and therefore shooed it away gently,but it kept returning and this yng woman who studies less and keeps worrying only about money,fees and who will write her vario us assingments and records [unlike several other visually impaired girls who are really focussed on their studies and work hard] said 'M'am in our village when we go out to the fields to work poeple from another caste will enter our place and carry away all our cats and eat them'. She asked seriously 'Won't they get asthma?
I was diverted from my reading and started pondering over her question. Do someKoreans who are believed to eat dogs get rabbies or some Chinese who are widely believed to eat snakes spew venom? I jolted out of my thinking when i realised I was here to help her with her studies and not to analyse the eating habits of a particular class of people and its consequences.
Then I told her look I came here with noble intentions of rendering service to V.I people sacrificing the comfort of my house ,intellectual and professio nal pursuits to lift you out of poverty and here you are, not troubled by any doubts in ur lessons but whether eating cats will harm one or not .And the q is posed to a person who belongs to a community wheremeat eating is taboo where even eating onion is frowned upon.
Then I offered to fetch her pal who was studying further away as she belonged to the very community and would be in better position to clear her grave doubts? At this she became alarmed and said No m'am No ur too funny.Just then the skinny kitten brushed against our legs mewing and she cursed it saying it was the cause of all this diversion .At this both of laughed and that was the end of my reading session for the day.

Reel vs Real life

It is not only in reel life that a Neta ' who does a lot of foul deeds covertly will be fe'ted and eugolised in a public stage but it seems also in real life.

The person whose actions and at times lack of it ,which were the immediate cause of my grief and sorrow, beamed smugly from a leading newspaper last week on bagging some high sounding tittle from a western country in the same field [for out standing contribution] that has changed my life forever.