Chowk Tales II: Conversations

Please tell me more about the names Kamal and Jamal. Are they used as references to earlier texts? I am interested in the origins of these names. I`d also like to know more about the Chowk. Thank you.

Beautifully concieved. I`m covered with envy at the effortless way you manage to create these little microcosms. I found the one about the satellite dish most entertaining. I hope you`ll excuse the liberty, the following conversations came to mind for a few years later.

Jamal (Back from University): I have been reading Nietzsche and Engels this year. Now I know why we are different.
Kamal: Why is that, what does he say?
Jamal: I carry a gene for success. I was born to rule. My family is so successful and wealthy because God made us better than the average man.
Kamal: Oh dear. That means there`s no point in anything I try to do.
Jamal: Yes. But don`t worry, I`m a socialist so I`ll take care of you.

Kamal: My father went to vote today. One of the candidates told him that because he pays taxes, the government should take care of him. Thats who he`ll be voting for.
Jamal: How will the government do that?
Kamal: I don`t know, but the government is rich it should use some of the money it has to help the poor man. Maybe they will hire more civil servants, and my father can get a good job in government.
Jamal: (buying a Kulfi from a street vendor) OK. Do you know this Kulfi costs twice as much as last year. I wonder why everything keeps getting so expensive?

Three months later:
Kamal: That candidate was a washout. Two years from now, my father says he will stand himself. He thinks he can get the vote of the common man.
Jamal: How many votes will he need?
Kamal: Oh about 130,000. I hear your father became an MPA this time, congratulations. How many votes did he get?
Jamal: 15,000.

Kamal: We just got our electricity bill, and father has been bad tempered all day. Its ridiculous how expensive things are.
Jamal: We only pay Rs.500 a month, because when the metre man comes in, we pay him 400 and get a bill of Rs.100.
Kamal: But thats a bribe! Isn`t that wrong?
Jamal: Its OK. My father says that the meter man doesn`t get enough to live on, because we are a poor country so CESC doesn`t make enough to pay him well.

And life goes on.... :-)

I loved the one in which the poor boy asks what is education. It is an incredibly perceptive comment that what we mean by education is what the rich class defines it to be. `The rich-more-westernized thereby superior and wiser class`. We judge families by whose family learnt english earlier than the other. The British Convent school was perhaps more effective than the nuclear bomb at eradicating a culture.

The other striking one is where the little rich boy says that nobody can throw a stone at his glass house coz everyone knows better.