Pathshala Funwali
He sat amidst the squalor. His house, with asbestos sheets as its walls didn’t have any window. But the windows of his heart were always open. He wanted to learn and his mother encouraged him to do so. His house though small was no less than a museum. Drums of various sizes were properly arranged at the entrance. The plastic bottles were kept in a big net. The newspapers and magazines were the only things which were allowed inside the house not because they were special but they were likely to be damaged by rains or the dogs that fought for no reason in the night. This is how his romance with the letters in the print started. He had been to a primary school where he learnt to read and write in Marathi. So he would pick up Marathi newspaper and magazine and read out the stories in it. His mother would stand akimbo. His son’s reading had opened a new world to her. She had never heard these stories from anyone. The only stories she heard living in that ghetto were of w