The girl takes PM Modi on a virtual tour of school building
Kathua: Chubby-cheeked Seerat Naaz, a schoolgirl from Jammu, not more than 9-10 years perhaps, has made a heart-touching appeal to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for a clean and proper school, a report in The Tribune, Chandigarh, says.
In her 5-minute video she speaks to the Prime Minister with that typical candour, trusting innocence and hope, in a way that only a child can. Her plaintive-voiced request to the prime minister in Hindi is simple and direct: “Modiji, meri bhi sun lo” (Modiji, do listen to me also).
She is not happy that her school is in shambles and and that she and her classmates have to sit on the dirty floor as there are no benches, chairs or desks, and wants the holder of the country’s most powerful office to do something about it.
From Lohai-Malhar village in Kathua district of Jammu, Seerat, who studies in the local government school, urges Mr. Modi: “Please Modiji, ek achhi si school banwa do na (Please Modiji, won’t you build a nice school for us)”.
She then cuts herself out of the frame and takes a walk down her school compound, giving ‘Modi-ji’ a sense of all that it lacks and what she thinks the authorities could do to make it better.
She continues in a complaining tone, “Modi-ji, mujhe na aap se ek baat kehni hain (Modi-ji, there is something I need to tell you.)”.
Seerat then pans the phone camera towards an uncovered concrete surface, right in front of two closed doors which she identifies as the “principal’s office and the staff room”.
Giving a further first-hand view of the glaring lack of amenities at the school, she shows how the students don’t even have functional toilets and have to relieve themselves in the open.
“Dekho humara farsh kitna ganda ho chuka hain. Humein yahan niche bithate hain (Look how dirty the floor is. They make us sit here).” The chubby-cheeked youngster then takes the PM on a virtual tour of the school building, saying, “Chalo mein aap ko ek bari si building dikhati hoon aapne school ki (let me show you the big building where our school is)”.
As she walks a few steps further an unfinished building comes into view.
“Yeh dekho, pichle 5 saalon se, dekho kitni gandi building hain yahan pe. Chalo mein aap ko andar se dikhati hoon (Look how unclean the building has been for the last 5 years. Let me take you on a tour of the inside of the building)”.
“Please, aap se na request karti hoon, aap na achha sa school bana do. Humein niche baithna parta hain aur hamari uniform gandi ho jati hain aur phir humein Mamma marti hain. Humare pas bench bhi nahin hain (I request you to build us a nice school. We have to sit on the floor because of which our uniforms get dirty. My mother often scolds and beats me for this. We don’t even have benches to sit on).” She then walks up takes an unplastered flight of stairs to the first floor and pans her lens towards the corridor, which has a similar unclean appearance as the ground floor.
“Please Modi-ji, mein aap se request karti hoon ki achha sa bana de yeh school. Meri bhi baat sun lo (Please Modi-ji, I am requesting you to make my school better. Please grant my wish)”.
She then skips down the stairs and proceeds to the outer compound with her lens firmly directed towards the unclean surface.
The little one pans her lens out towards the “toilet”, which barely has the appearance of one.
“Dekho, humara kitna ganda toilet aur tut gaya hain (Look how filthy and broken our toilet is).”She then points to an open area where she says a new school building is coming up.
Giving a further first-hand view of the glaring lack of amenities at the school, she shows how the students don’t even have functional toilets and have to relieve themselves in the open.
“Humein iss naali mein jana parta hain (We need to head to this drain to relieve ourselves.)”
Seerat endscloses her video with a fervent appeal to PM Modi. “Modi-ji, aap poore desh ki sunte ho. Meri bhi sun lo aur achha sa humara yeh school banwa do. Bilkul sundar sa school bana do taaki humein niche na baithna padhe. Taaki Mamma na mare. Taaki achhe se padhai karein. Humara school please achhe se banwa do” (Modi-ji, you listen to all the countrymen. Please listen to me too and build us a good school. The school should be such that we don’t have to sit on the floor. So that my mother doesn’t scold or beat me. So that we can all study well. So Please have a nice school constructed for us)
(Rewite by David Solomon)
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