The End of Innocence

“Laash aati hai,khatam ho jaati hai,” says a very young shroud-picker who looks,impossibly,still like a child. “Yeh toh murda jalane ki factory hai.” The children sleep right there. We see them on the ground,much like the bodies they service. They smoke dope,to tune out the acrid smoke that permanently wreathes them. They never seem to eat: at least we don’t see them doing it in the film. Where’s the scope of appetite with the sights and sounds of the mass funeral filling your soul?

What we do see is rows and rows of bodies,with legs and heads sticking out from pyres. Family members sometimes want the boys to make sure that they burn right,by poking a stick into the chita. It’s enough to drive anyone insane,and the good cheer and resilience that Jala catches is amazing. He follows them to a late-night nautanki with a girl gyrating to Beedi jalai le on a make-shift stage right above the ghats: the irony is inescapable.

One of the boys sings,not very accurately,the national anthem to mark Independence Day,and you wonder at the children and their lives: freedom to do what,to be what? Last year,Jala began working with the help of an NGO to educate the boys,to get them out of themselves. A worthy step.