“ I was walking down the unmetalled roads of my village. I was going to school. Yes, I know how impossible it sounds. Me, a girl of age 12 going to a school. Well, there’s a reason. The government pays my family for me to go to school. So, my parents had begrudgingly agreed for me to go to school.
Now, as my village is a backward kind of community in India, we don’t have proper access to washrooms. Reading and learning about the lives of people living in urban cities in our very own country makes me envious. Why? Because our country is divided into two stark contrasts of people. Filthy rich and Dirty poor. Those are the titles I have heard and I feel they have been used correctly. It describes the condition of our country correctly.
Well, this is all a matter of the past for our village now. Well, it’s not flipped over but we are changing and modernizing towards the modern techniques and advanced methods. But the biggest change our village is seeing is the creation of toilets. I still remember how our village used to be with us defacing in public or in the wilderness. It was a kind of a dignity loss as I felt women should be using a washroom instead of nature.
That’s why I become envious towards the upper class sometimes. They seem to think of us as animals and not helping us. But, now the scenario has changed. The government has taken the initiative to help us.
As I am walking towards the school I go to, I can see constructions going on. Every month new buildings and washrooms are being created. I get to see more and more friends of mine in school every month- they join it. Why? Because now the parents are sending the girls again when they see the standard of the washrooms being created. It has solved a huge problem for them.I had heard that reason a lot as many of my friends left. But I could not leave the school, could I? I provided a meagre income for my family by coming to school. So, I had to continue going to school. And, for the first time- parents come to school to thank me. And, now I may have got you wondering why people came and did that? Because, when I had seen the dire need of washrooms arise in our village- I had sent a letter regarding the conditions of our village to the state government. And as a precaution, one to the Prime minister’s office too. I know it sounds too farfetched, but I did it, and I and every one of my village can see the effects of my letter in our village.
The open defecation sounds like it had never existed. I know, that you who are reading this, will never be able to imagine how we coped with it and how we had to deal with the embarrassment when someone from the government embassy asked us where the washroom was. Above all, the villagers were contracting diseases. Some were even on the verge of dying! That was the final straw for me. After all, if I wanted to see a change, I had to be the change.
It’s what Babli would do. She would become the beacon for her village and help it achieve its glory. It is our responsibility to turn the tables of Indian hygiene around, we have to think
and take a step forward in improving the sanitation within the nation. Just as it is always said - ' a healthy nation makes a wealthy nation'. Now, it’s time I said adios to this humble village.
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