BPL?

The road was dug up. A faded, rusty old sign said "Men At Work" I didn't see any - men, that is. There was a gang of women, all ages, doing all kinds of work. Sweeping, cleaning, carrying head loads of cement-concrete, etc. Of men there seemed to be a distinct shortage. 

There were little children, too, playing right in the middle of all the work that was going on all around - toddlers, perhaps a year old and going up to 3 or so. Playing with empty plastic bottles, playing with discarded rags, the "older" ones looking after the younger... 

I remembered, suddenly, a scene from many, many years back - in Madras/Chennai, my brother's flat was getting ready. The superstructure had been built, the interiors were getting done - plastering, painting, the woodwork etc. The mason, as usual a male was barking orders at the workers, mostly women. One girl in particular, an uncle pointed her out to me. (The uncle in question was known to have a roving eye - and, it is rumoured, I take after him.)

She was black as coal, young, perhaps around 17-18, and beautiful to a fault. Wide eyes, shining white in that coal dark face, competing to outshine her pearly white teeth. My uncle told me to just watch her when she enters the bed room where the carpenters were busy working, setting up the dressing table and the wardrobe.... she stood there, in a corner, frightened to step inside, afraid that the carpenter would give her an earful. Meanwhile, the mason was shouting at the gang to keep moving...

My uncle told me "Just watch this" and called the carpenter to the hall to discuss some "issues". She stepped in gingerly, and stood in front of the mirror, a full length mirror, and she gazed and gazed at her own image. Eyes widened impossibly, mouth agape in a big round O - and I stood, looking at her, rapt in the expressions that flitted across her face. My uncle, finished with the carpenter, stepped in to the room and asked her playfully yet gently "What are you looking at?"

Her reply was so spontaneous and innocent - "My Goodness!! Am I so beautiful? I have, till date, never seen myself in a mirror like this, fully from head to toe. In my hut we use a small broken mirror where I can see only my forehead or my eyes or my chin but till now I've never even seen my full face!"

And, in that moment, I understood what all our planning commissions mandarins still do not - poverty has it's own way of hitting one in the face.