Question

The bangle makers of Ferozabad make beautiful bangles but they live and die in squalor. Why cant they come out of it ?

Answer 1

The bangle makers of Firozabad were born in the caste of bangle makers which means that they had seen nothing but bangles in their house, yard, and in every other house and yard and on every street. The spirals of bangles in every colour lay in mounds in unkept yards, piled on four-wheeled carts pushed by young men along the narrow lanes of the shanty towns. In the dark tenements inhabited by them, next to lines of flames of flickering oil lamps,  boys and girls sat with their fathers and mothers welding pieces of coloured glass onto circle of bangles. Their eyes were more adjusted to the dark than to the light outside and that is why they often ended up loosing their eyesight by the time they were adults. They worked mechanically on the bangles which were considered sacred relics of a married woman. They did not have light in their eyes because they did not have food in their stomach. They had not enjoyed even one full mean in their entire lifetime. They knew nothing but bangles and even then they had enough to eat. The squalid conditions in which they lived were antithetical to the joy they produced through bangles. They worked themselves to death so that people could use these ornaments.