60 an hour…

A while back I was riding back in a car with my cuz and grandmother when we had to halt at this very busy traffic signal. Like all busy traffic signal, each a host to several wild but absurd ideas of making a quick buck, this one too had its share of the pie. Well each one of us gets caught in this seemingly harmless waste of time, nonnegotiable, unavoidable and always in the eye of the big belly of law…

Well I know not many would have got it and quite a few will term it a PJ in every sense once the explanation is over….. Okay here goes… I basically took law as the long arm and the cops the big belly as the physique needed to be a cop in India is a big belly… looks like the classification/cadre of the Indian police force is determined by the size of the stomach.

Coming back before I deviate any further, our car windows were knocked on by several vendor, a guy selling sunglass’ of a reputed brand , another selling magazines, a couple of small kids doing a mini but poorly orchestrated show and another with a yellow cloth, apparently its supposed to be for the car windscreen. After rejecting all the above said participants of global marketing and entertainment in about 30 seconds we have the national job of all lazy Indians, Begging.

Off late a new dimension has been added to this scenario. The armless and lame man has already become passé/cliché. Now it’s the turn of the mother. True enough it wasn’t long before a knock made me turn to my side of the window. I look to my cousin and with looks communicate what’s to be done. She nods a refusal and I shake my head at the woman and she carries on.
After she had gone a couple of cars down my sister reveals something that shocks me. Well everybody in the car I must say. Apparently a couple of days back she read in an article in some newspaper, which covered a very weird topic. Apparently the article stated that these women who come to your car knocking for some change is actually not the mother of the child. We were like, WHAT!!!!

The article went on to state that the city cops had arrested a gang who were giving out babies on hire. The gang ran a crèche for the upper lower class and the lower middle class people the ones where the folks were both bread winners and did not have enough to put their kid in a play school. The gang was exposed, when one day a parent was not feeling well and happened to return early to collect the child and the people at the crèche started making excuses trying to delay the return of the child. Initially the parent accepted the reasons and waited for half an hour but growing weary the parent started getting suspicious and demanded the return of her child. Helpless when the crèche people did not cooperate she sought the help of the police and that’s when they got to the bottom of the whole affair.

Apparently the couple who ran the crèche were renting out the children they were taking care of. Imagine the very thought of a parent travelling in a local bus and while looking out you look into the eyes of your toddler lying limb in the hands of a stranger and think, “poor kid looks so much like my but thank heavens mine is safe in a crèche”. How wrong you are….

Apparently the running rate was Rs. 60 an hour.