Like an old garment greyed with age,
Like an old bronze vessel dulled with verdigris,
Her life.
Stuck between washed and ironed garments
Within the scoured and stacked pots
On the cleaned and polished floor.
Arundhati Jayakumar, a Class 10 student of Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Higher Secondary School, Mokeri, Kannur, wrote this little poem on the lives of housewives, homemakers. Kerala’s Finance Minister Thomas Isaac read it out in his budget speech on Friday morning, to ‘lay bare the sad state of women in our state’. It can be changed, he said, only by ensuring their financial independence.
Isaac used it as a prelude to speak of schemes for women's employment, promising jobs for at least 20 lakh of those who had to leave their careers and stay home and those got educated but never got to work.
The idea to use poems of school students in his more than three-hour long budget speech came from a project called Aksharavriksham (Tree of Letters) by the education department. It was launched to encourage creative talents in children during the COVID-19 lockdown when they stayed home for long periods. Fifteen poems were chosen from 56,399 creations published by 4,947 schools, available in school wiki website.
No fish inflicts wounds
On the ocean,
No bird-wing
Ruptures the sky,
The butterfly- kiss
Leaves the bloom
Un-burdened,
Still man alone
Thus ruins the earth.
This came from a Class 7 student, Afra Mariam, of Government Upper Primary School, Karingapara, Malappuram. “It is a reality that we elders do not possess the environmental awareness that even our children have,” Minister Isaac said after reading out the poem and proceeding to the part of the budget meant for ‘environmental clearance’.
Through the speech, he sprinkled poems of reality, poems of hope. Navalu Rahman of Thottada bared the plain fact - No trade, no business / These are times Man gets confined, At home -- jobless, wageless. While SS Jackson, a class 9 student of Thiruvananthapuram reminded people we had seen worse.
We who saw many depths
We who writhed in many vortices
We who were consumed by many fires
We are born to rise again
We wouldn't lose even in death.
To talk about reaching self-sufficiency in agriculture, Thomas Isaac quoted Alex Robin Roy from Kollam.
The spring will return
So will the wintry fall
The autumnal showers and torrential rains
We'll fight without losing
Soft breeze will caress
Paddy fields will yield
If we move together in unison
Everything will return to us...
The minister began and ended his record speech with two cheerful poems, the first words he spoke being the ones written by seventh grader K Sneha of Palakkad. “Day will dawn / And Sun will rise radiant, / Merciful flowers will bloom / And light will make a paradise of earth / We will fight Corona and succeed / And bring back a happy dawn,” her poem said.
The final words came from KP Amal of Idukki. “Oh let my dreams / Gently grow wings! / And therein blow the conch, / The morning clarion Of a radiant new age.”
Cover pictures of budget documents were also drawn and designed by children.