Thirty-Two #2
Nasreen calms her down, leads her away and talks quietly to her, sending her off into another room, before coming back to
me. I feel awkward and uncomfortable, sure I have done, or said, something wrong. I find myself looking at my clothes, making
sure I’m not wearing anything revealing that may have upset her, but there is nothing.
“Is she okay?” I ask Nasreen.
“She’s making us chai.” Nasreen sighs. “Zara was trying to tell you about the mines here. Whenever we have a visitor, she
hopes they can do something about the mining. It’s a terrible story. I’m sorry.”
“What’s the story.”
“Her daughter died in the mine shaft.”
My face falls. That poor woman. “That’s awful.”
“She was seven years old.”
“Seven?” I am so shocked, my voice comes out louder than I intended. “What the hell was a seven-year-old doing down a mine
shaft?”
Nasreen sighs. “That’s unfortunately one of the reasons I wanted to start the nonprofit. There are old bauxite and mica mines
here, but recently they discovered cobalt deposits nearby. Families send children because they’re small enough to squeeze
into the shafts. They earn almost nothing for the stones they dig, but for families here, even a few rupees can mean the difference
between eating and not.” She shakes her head sadly. “The children dig out sacks of ore, rinse them in the village well and
carry them to market. A full day’s work might fetch them fifty rupees.”
“How did her daughter die?”
“They dig deep tunnels without any safety measures, often a hundred feet down. The smallest children crawl through the narrow
spaces. No helmets, no protective clothing. They use broken planks or scraps of metal to hold up the shafts. Khushi was her
daughter. She went in with three friends, all under ten. The tunnel collapsed. None of them came out.”
My hands fly to my mouth as tears spring into my eyes, leaking slowly down my cheeks. Who am I to grieve for this girl, but
the heartbreak is too much for me.
“It happens all the time,” says Nasreen. “That’s why we’re trying to get the children into school. We’re trying to train the mothers in the crafts centers so they can help support their families, and so their children won’t have to go to the mines.”
“I’m so sorry.” I’m apologizing for my leaking tears. Zara soon returns with a brass tray bearing a steel kettle and two small
glasses of steaming masala chai. I turn away so she doesn’t see my tears, pretending to rub my face, wiping the tears dry.
When I turn back, Zara has her head cocked, looking at me. She puts the tray down on the table, and takes my hand, lifting
it to her cheek and closing her eyes as she holds my hand to her cheek. She says something softly that I don’t understand.
I look to Nasreen for a translation, who nods at Zara and smiles at us both.
“She is blessing you. She can see your heart is hurting, and she is saying that God is watching over you, and you are in His
protection.” Zara says something else, almost under her breath.
“What did she say?”
“She says we are all in this fight together. We have to be.”
I turn to Nasreen. If I’m going to use whatever platform and privilege I have to help, I know I need to learn the full story.
“Do you think we could see the mine?”
Nasreen nods. “I knew you were going to ask that. Yes. I’ll take you after lunch. You know when I said yesterday that I thought
you had changed?”
I grin, knowing what’s coming. “You haven’t changed at all.”
We drive for an hour until we reach a vast, pit-holed plain, piles of rubble everywhere, pools of water, flat pans of steel
scattered around, and people of all shapes and sizes shoveling the stones, calling out to each other as they crouch down and
work. Tiny children are everywhere, running through the puddles, splashing each other, and I pass a woman in a dark dupatta,
her tiny newborn baby clutched to her belly, wrapped by a tight scarf.
We pull over and Nasreen starts to lead me toward the mines. I stop at what looks like a huge hole, seeing the top of a head. The head looks up, and it is a child, no more than ten or eleven.
“Is he standing on the ground?” I ask Nasreen, who shakes her head.
“On a ledge. This shaft goes down hundreds of feet.”
I turn, noticing a group of young girls sitting on a pile of stones, sorting through the rocks and washing them in pans of
water. One of them looks up at me, and all I can think is this girl should be in school. She should be in, what? Kindergarten?
First grade? She should be sitting in a classroom learning how to read and write, playing with friends. I walk over to them,
and the smallest one grins shyly at me before reaching up and touching the necklace I am wearing with her tiny hands. I got
the necklace in the Bahamas on a trip with my dad. It’s a long necklace made of tiny shells, with a large tassel at the bottom.
I love it, as does this little girl. I pull it over my head and hand it to her, tell her to keep it and she stares at it,
turning the shells over and over, unable to believe it is now hers.
Her name is Ananya, says Nasreen. She is six years old.
Has she been down the mine shaft, I ask?
Nasreen asks, and I watch the little girl nod.
“What can I do?” I ask Nasreen helplessly.
“There are a million girls like her. What you can do is bring this to the world’s attention. Put an end to child labor and
get schools built. Provide transportation so the children can get to schools. Boarding houses if the schools are too far from
the villages. They don’t need a savior. But they could benefit from the spotlight that your specific position provides.” Nasreen
looks at her watch. “We should go, Missy. If I’m to get you to the factory you want to see and then back to the hotel to get
changed for dinner, we should make a move.”
I can’t bear to leave Ananya. I ask permission to pick her up and give her a hug.
The factory is in stark contrast to the mine.
It is on the outskirts of Pune, but looks like it could be in California.
Clean, modern, slick, it is a huge compound of white concrete buildings with corrugated metal roofs that look and feel, at least on the inside, like every factory I have ever been into.
Jeff Linnehan comes out to meet me. A large affable man who was in charge of one of the factories in China, he has been with
ipryy for years. I have met him a couple of times when he has been out to the Cupertino offices, and we had emailed in preparation
for this visit.
“Missy! Welcome to India!” He shakes my hand, introducing me to some of the men standing around him, his deputy, Krish, another
man, and the foreman.
Nasreen and I are handed plastic hair caps and face masks to tour the factory. Jeff leads us around, explaining how exciting
it is that we are developing battery cell prototypes here, that we are using new and innovative manufacturing processes to
mass produce cells, which will help us control the costs of new devices for ipryy home.
“By moving to India, we avoid the new trade tariffs that forced us to sever ties with our manufacturing facilities in China,”
he explains.
I notice Nasreen slips back, is talking to one of the men walking around with us. I don’t understand anything they’re saying,
but I do notice Nasreen’s expression changing.
“I need the bathroom,” she announces suddenly. “Missy? Do you?”
I am about to say no, but her eyes widen ever so slightly in the universal female language that means come with me; I need
to tell you something.
We are led upstairs to the corporate bathroom. Jeff waits outside, and Nasreen lowers her voice as soon as the doors are closed.
“They’re using cobalt for the batteries,” she says. My brain doesn’t register what she’s saying. “From the mines here. They’re