The mother’s head is draped in a pale green mantle and her face is heart-shaped. Her light brown skin glows, her eyes look down and her lips are parted. She points to words in a book and the boy’s eyes follow her finger. He perches on her knee in the posture of royal-ease so that together they look like a depiction of the Madonna and child
She looks about five or six years old and she’s completely surrounded by towers of bricks that reach way above her head. On hand rests against their rough surface and her sea-shell-pink fingernails contrast with their dull brown, baked-earth colour. Her pink frilly dress is completely torn away at the shoulder. She’s slightly frowning.
He’s sitting on the platform of a train station. His brown striped jumper is unravelling round the neck. A key threaded onto a string dangles at his chest. His back is straight; his gaze clear and steady. I’d guess his age to be eleven or twelve.
Her hair is in looped pigtails, tied with red ribbons in double bows. She has silver rings in one nostril and a golden bracelet on her wrist. Her dress is white with a green Peter-Pan collar, a green sash and a green ruffle around the bodice. She holds, as if to offer it, what at first I think is a sheaf of wheat. But Vandanajyoti tells me it’s a broom; that the girls make them. Her lips are smiling and so are her eyes.
We gaze into the faces of children and parents whose photographs make up our booklet and, from the shrine, they gaze at us, communicating that the triumph over prejudice and ignorance is a triumph for us all. We’ve been ritually empowering the booklets before taking them out to give to people. Alokada steps into the candle-light and picks up the first bundle. Tears fill my eyes; my hand moves to my heart.
