BATTI

BATTI

The childhood shows the man

As morning shows the day.

John Milton, Paradise Regained

A day in the life of Batti(source of light), a 10 year old boy, who works on his daily routine of cleaning parked cars early in the morning, finds solace in keeping himself busy without uttering a word or shedding an emotion. True to the mirrors reflection, he reflects his desires and ambitions of a normal childhood on the shiny, silvery reflected-self, but the city of dreams demands a price. Realizing this, just like a routine, he dresses up for another job in hand, picks up his saddle with second-hand novels, ABC’s books and poetry.

Joined by his friend dressed similar for the job they board on the lifeline of Mumbai, local trains, in a hope of earning their days’ worth. While his friend sells flying balloons, he hopes to find people, sleepy, unaware, aloof and struggling in their own senses to buy his books. But today is no different, the local train runs faster when you want a hold on life and slows down when you want to run away from everything and everyone.

Amidst the sweet chaos, that is life, he finds an opportunity to reflect upon society’s norm of a standardized, class-segregated human being when pressured and held by an irritated traveler to read from his own books, and bets, while others watch in pitiless awe, that if BATTI reads a single word from one of his books then he will buy the whole lot then and there. What follows is a true reflection of our society, at present!