When in the education sector someone today gets a degree of "B.Ed" or "M.ED", it is supposed to signify or mean - "Bachelors or Masters" in Education. On the same light, the title of this short story will mean that MASK - "Ed" means - Mask or Masters of Education.
However, this short story began on a Wintry morning. The morning had a storm. But it was not a natural storm induced by climate change. However, the epiphany was about climate change on a platform called - "Twitter" creating a storm. Action to save humanity through Twitter via a storm was launched with all its facets. While the storm was going on, some new conspiracies to plant a new bomb or a digital or a civil war was going on all across the world. The TV set was showcasing all these images and collage of news in different channels of a little shanty space of a JJ colony in New Delhi. A middle aged husband was scrolling through the news channels by lying down on the bed in a drunken state. At the same time, a girl of age 16 was sitting on the ground with her knitting, weaving weapons.
A little girl had not gone to school on that day as there was a Twitter storm and it was raining outside. The school was closed that day. The little girl had pledged that on the day of the Twitter storm, she would not go to school; but would rather knit a hand woven mask. She was weaving the mask for her mother. The mother of the child was staying on the same shanty and was working as a daily maid or "Chutti Bai" in the various quarters near the JJ colony. Many of the houses were skeptical of the maid as she could not buy a good properly protected N 95 or medically prescriptive mask as it was still costly since it was the early days of Covid 19 in India.
The cost of the masks were gradually going down due to bulk production but the cost was still not enough low for the mother to buy the mask. Due to the absence of the mask, the mother was fast loosing jobs from the nearby houses of middle class households who were telling her not to come in their house to work. The daughter could not bear this pain of the mother. Therefore, on the day of the Twitter storm outside, inside and everywhere, the daughter decided that the entire day she would not go to school but from the morning to evening she would only create one mask as a gift for her mother through her own hand. A mask which would protect her mom from COVID and from job loss. The Twitter storm deepened, violence erupted, peace was sought for everywhere within and outside the minds of people but nothing could stop the daughter from weaving the mask. The mask was being made out of a wool which she had silently got through some of the money she had saved earlier. The mother after the day's work returned back at the shanty of the JJ colony of New Delhi. The mother was getting ready to be beaten up by the husband who had given up job sometime back as he lost his job of driving auto-rickshaw which got closed due to lockdown. The husband's only job now was to beat up the wife after being drunk all through out the day once the mother or his wife returned back to the little space after a daylong work.
On the day of the Twitter storm, the mother entered the house, but before the husband could greet her with violence, the daughter welcomed the mother with this Mask she had woven the entire day by knitting and by not going to school. The mother accepted the MASK from the daughter and kept it close to her heart and smiled with tears of joy. The daughter smiled back. The mother said - "This is my true MASK of EDUCATION - which can mean both MASK - ED or M- ED".
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