Diary of Punam

here is a short diary entry that I made for an english assignment and thought it was actually deep. It's about an eight year old girl living in slum part of southern India. Enjoy :)

Diary of Punam

 

Dear journal,

 

   I write here in my small damp corner in our rotten wood hut. I can feel the splinters of my old rosewood stool cave into the bottom of my maa’s old, torn, purple and green cholis wrapped around my waist, held up by the worn out rope that my maa once used to give birth to me. The prickling chill from my sun disk wrapped around my little nose, rusting from the dirty water I bathe in and how it gives me the constant smell of ruined metal. I can feel the cold, pounding, hard rain dripping through the cracks of our sagging rooftop, falling onto the tightly knitted braid that maa made for me before going to work. My family and neighbors say that the liquid is just rain, but it does not smell and taste like rain. It smells like gas and rotten eggs, yet tastes metallic and dirty. Where I live there is no good water, but sewage filled lakes and dirty rain from the power plants. We are not like the lucky that have indoor plumbing.

   Maa and Pita are out working in the city now selling goods for little money. Maa is selling prickling wool blankets while Pita is selling the only suitable fish he could find in our mucky waters. We are always told that we children can have fish too if Pita catches enough for all of us children, yet there is never enough to satisfy our tummies.

   Maa is great at weaving, but she has no good material to weave from. She usually finds whatever is good enough in the hammy-down heaps that the richer people leave for us slums. They think that they are contributing and are pretending as if they have sympathy for us, but they don’t really accept slums. But that isn’t odd for people like them to treat people like me that way. Whenever I go to the park in the square and play with the other children, the mothers and nannies just grab their children and rush off away from me. I over heard one old granny say to her grandson coldly: “don’t touch her, she is not clean enough to look into your eyes.” I have many friends where I live, but they get sick very often. We don’t have good healthcare here and many times children my age go to Brahma. My friend Raja has recently gone to heaven from eating polluted fish that he found on the shore near the power plant. Even though many of my sisters and brothers have gone to Brahma, I am not sad because I never really knew them. They all passed before they could talk. Maa and Pita say that my brother Achal and I are a miracle sent from the gods because Achal has been able to live up to 18 winters and me 8 winters. 

   Our homes are not very good for sleeping. They are usually made up of old soggy wood we find in our polluted waters or in the gutters. We do not have windows but small openings and use thick wool blankets as fold doors. We have a little fire pit in our hut, but we usually don’t use it because it is so hot from all of the air pollutants. We usually use rotten wood for ceilings, but they have holes in them form the termites that crawl through our huts. Sometimes we use heaps of straw but rather use wood, cause it is stronger and more stable. Even if it is all mushy. If we are lucky, Pita will find good wood in the allies, but only if the carpenters don’t take it first. They think that it is their wood before ours and whenever Pita and my uncles go to retrieve it, the carpenters just spit at them and push them to the ground. We are all very weak from lack of nutrition and don’t have much energy. So we usually don’t fight those who aren’t worth it.

   Maa always tries to cook yummy food, but it is nothing like the delicious Kulfi that I smell in the perfectly cut out bakeries. Jokingly, Achal says that someday he will sell enough fish to by me a whole bucket full of Kulfi. Maa hits him lightly on the tip of his hair part and says: “don’t give the child such lies, or a snake will bite your tongue off. Even though he is not serious, Achal is the greatest brother in the whole Himalayas.

I must go now to help Maa with our sweeping of the hut.

Love,

Punam 

 

Dictionary:

Cholis- an outfit consisting of a top descending just above the belly button with a long skirt and a wrapped Shaw. (Similar to a sari)

Maa- a slang way of saying mom

Pita- a slang way of saying dad

Brahma- the highest of the Hindu gods. (Similar to Zeus in Greek Mythology)

Kulfi- an ice cream like dessert consisting of vanilla and boiled, dried milk

Himalayas- a mountain range that passes through Nepal and northern India

Author's Note

Bet you all are crying now ;)

Reviews

[Talismanic]

beautiful stab between the ribs, this not only raises the bitter reality of poverty but does so in a way that is so eloquently detailed and innocent . i'l be back to write more in the morning :')) flawless story... keep them coming

[Pritesh]

Awesome real depiction of experience.You really alived the world for the readers and visualize your thoughts.From your diary note it seems that you are indian and are deeply engaged with it because i am also so.keep writing;-)