From the pen-APN
I am sleeping on the footpath and the
only torn blanket that I have wrapped around my body is my world. The blinding
street lights, colossal edifices, crowded malls, wide roads, the bustling traffic
and restless crowd around me cannot excite me. I am a non-entity in the
fast-moving and fast-changing world. For years, the footpath has given me
shelter and the glittery world by the sides of footpath has thoroughly
convinced me of my littleness. All know I am in poverty and poverty is in me
and I am alive like grass which is crushed under feet but stubbornly clings to
life……..My life pitiably lingers on the footpath.
Needless to say…..I experience the
gnawing poverty and at the same time, I
bear testimony to the moral poverty of my country’s rulers and the insatiable
greed of big shots who are seated at the helm of power.
My impoverished shabbiness is
jarringly out of place with the glitters of the swanky supermarkets and the posh city culture but I am undone. I have to
stay in them unwanted like a cacophony in a beautiful piece of music. I cannot
do much to mend my fate but, in these days, I have learnt to stay oblivious to the
tall promises of “Achhe din ayenge” made by
many politicians who hold power, wield power and swag power.
Today morning, I was hired to carry
a political party’s banner in a rally for half a day’s wage. I carried my old
body and hurriedly advanced in spite of my advanced age because the party
worker won’t pay me unless I held his banner high and walked straight in the
rally. The pity is that my back is irrevocably bent by my leaders and by their
faulty policies whereas I have no option but to hold their banner high in
exchange of a half day’s wage or a few kilograms of subsidized rice.
They frame laws for me to make
poorer so that I can hold their banner high in rallies at a little expense. I
am no statesman but from deep within my heart a voice painfully cries and asks
a question, “What is the value of that progress which cannot touch the lives of
the poorest of the poor?”
Tomorrow, I may be hired by some
other party but the question will remain the same.
Now I am almost dead with my own
struggles and I am assured of one thing that I have to go on like this a few
more days till my body lies motionless on the footpath and the municipality
people come to remove my corpse. But until
that day I have to carry their flag because the show must continue…..
