9-year-old hopes to be a cop to beat bad guys

Aparna Banerji

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, October 13

A nine-year-old drives her cycle cart around a busy uptown market in the city oblivious to the shining neon signs and plush showroom window displays during the festive season. Her attention is on scrapheads from which she collects pieces of cardboards, polythenes and other knick-knacks. For Ruby, a class IV student of a government school in Sabowal, it’s a daily evening affair.

Her father is a scrap dealer and her mother was stricken with a leg injury back in the day. Her 8-year-old sister and she are always on the lookout of odd jobs to keep the hearth burning.

Besides supplementing the family’s income, they also fully take care of the household chores. She has – more siblings but they are too young to earn for the household.

Sporting a tee which has ‘Paris London Happy Sunday’ written on it and an illustration of the Eiffel Tower, Ruby manages a feeble smile when asked about her dream.

Despite up against all odds, Ruby promptly tells that she wants to be a police officer. When asked why, she evades the question by just smiling innocently. On being pressed, she says, “To punish those who do bad things.”

After school hours, she sets out with her cart to pick miscellaneous items from across the city and returns by evening.

Her eyes well up with tears at the mention of her mother’s name, Ruby says, “She met with an accident and that rendered her unable to walk.”

When asked how her parents are taking to her working outside, she says, it was immaterial if they liked it or not as it was the need of hour for her to work.

A native of a Uttar Pradesh (UP) village (the name of which she doesn’t remember), Ruby says, she works for roughly five days in a week.

She lives in a shanty here and on being asked if she has friends in her vicinity, she quips, “I don’t go out much and I don’t have any time to play.”