7
Jul

The little flower girl

   Posted by: gargi   in Gender Issues, India

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The Flower Girl

normally street kids don’t approach cars with their windows up and the AC on…. it is too much waste of time, they are possibly better off approaching open ricks or cars with their windows down. this girl maybe thought that i would be interested in flowers, or she saw rani in the car and thought dry shelter …. i don’t know..

… she reminded me of Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘Little Match Girl’. Her eyes haunted me. I volunteer, i contribute, i don’t cheat on my taxes, i help where ever i can … why do I still feel so helpless….

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 9:27 am and is filed under Gender Issues, India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 comments so far

Nilu
 1 

I don’t know what you were thinking. That you actually took out a camera, even if it was a cell phone camera, and clicked when she was standing there at your window just comes across as being extremely rude and patronizing — all at once.

To convey your empathy, I suspect, you have robbed the little girl of her dignity.

July 7th, 2008 at 11:45 am
gargi
 2 

possibly ..

i have my camera out all the time. i shoot a lot from the car… she just popped into frame. … and for some peculiar reason she wanted her photo taken…. was thrilled when i showed her the pic on the view screen.

i took it about a month ago … posted it now…. even now i am not sure about the ethics of posting…..

July 7th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
smita
 3 

as you say street kids don’t approach cars with their windows up and the AC on.
may be in hard ship of earning this little one must have set target for herself for the day and in deperation of selling her flowers same must approached your car.It has nothing to do with ethic,photograph speaks of itself

July 7th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
ray
 4 

Hi ,

I was reading ur blog posts and found some of them to be wow.. u write well.. Why don’t you popularize it more.. ur posts on ur blog ‘POV’ took my particular attention as some of them are interesting topics of mine too;

BTW I help out some ex-IIMA guys who with another batch mate run http://www.rambhai.com where you can post links to your most loved blog-posts. Rambhai was the chaiwala at IIMA and it is a site where users can themselves share links to blog posts etc and other can find and vote on them. The best make it to the homepage!

This way you can reach out to rambhai readers some of whom could become your ardent fans.. who knows.. :)

Cheers,

July 7th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
gargi
 5 

@smita - thank you…. did i buy the flowers asked my colleague . no. but i gave her some money and a bottle of water. i felt guilty about that too :( not the water, but the money …. it will go to some muscle man who runs the racket …
@ray - thank you. will do….
h

July 8th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
pseudoKu
 6 

I remember a time when a friend wanted me to take a similar picture and I said no for ethical reasons. So, she went and asked the girls in question if it would be OK to take a picture with them. They were more than happy to pose and actually enjoyed the attention.

That apart, I don’t feel helpless when confronted with poverty, I feel let down by the collective human race. We could have done much better with the world.

Practical solutions: free economies, small government, welfare capitalism. Give people opportunities, allow people to create wealth, allow people to create jobs… Respect peoples intelligence.

July 11th, 2008 at 6:27 am

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