Poverty:((((

I see a woman holding a child and begging at a railway platform
I see a 6 year old kid washing plates at the local dhaba
I see a kid working in a Mechanic shed opposite a school
I see lepers flaunting their disease outside the temple
I see a woman working with a kid bawling by her side at a construction site
I see people doing their morning ablutions at the railway track
I see a family of eight sleeping in a single shack
I see families sleeping in front of shop fronts
I read about farmer suicides every other day on the eighth page on my newspaper
I hear about unclaimed corpses on the streets of Delhi
I hear about what an auto rick wallah has to do to drive a vehicle on Bangalore (he claims he is well off)
I see kids with swelling tummies on BBC
I Read about the alcohol deaths every odd year in tamilnadu
I read about fights happening over Quota implementation (have u ever heard of a protest for improving primary school education)
I see rickshawallahs in Delhi plying ladies weighing about a Ton for a pittance

Well you get the point, things are not exactly as they seem, was reading an article or rather a speech by sainath, he does make a point that farmer suicides and all never make the front-page , it is quite true , all of us want to believe that we are living in a hunky dory world where everything is fine at least that is what TOI wants us to believe , they would cover amitabh’s birthday , but would never cover the plight of a widow with two young kids who have a smile on their face because the cameraman asked them to give a smile ( remember a snap from an article in the India today some 3-4 years back ) , on a personal note , am a staunch believer in primary education , yup we don’t learn much at schools other than some fossilized material about benzene and gravity, but still an equal opportunity is to be given to those kids working in those factories making , beedis, match sticks and crackers.

I remember that there used to be this kid who used to work in the place where I lived in Delhi, this kid was bright, and quite enthused too, he was about 10 years old , kid could not read or write , he smoked and drank, there used to be this jat in that place who used to send the kids on errands to the grocery store, the kid’s commission used to be one cigarette for every pack and he used to get daaru every now and then from that illustrious gentleman. Now the kid used to steal, tell lies and used to badmouth everyone on the road. I used to stay on the 4th floor, One Day on a nice bright afternoon , unusual in Delhi , I was standing on the terrace and smoking a cigarette, I look down and I see this kid washing a fellow tenant’s vehicle, on the same road there were two more kids who were playing cricket. The kid was looking at the other kids with an inscrutable look on his face, I never understood what that look meant, was that a look of longing or that of misery, or of a profound understanding of the world, I felt really bad at that moment, maybe one of those things which u don’t forget, the kid in question got kicked out a week later as he was found with a ring belonging to a friend, never saw him again , his mom came and picked him up , happened to have a conversation with the mom, she spoke a dialect of Hindi which I couldn’t comprehend properly , the kid’s dad had come to Delhi to find work , he ended up as a rickshawallah, he sent for his family, they were 4 kids and a mother , the kid was the youngest one , he fell in love with some other woman , abandoned his family some 8 odd years ago, the eldest son now works as a taxi driver and he does not give a penny home , he apparently has his own family now at the age of 22, the 2 girls were working in a local cloth factory and this kid was the worst of the lot , accused of stealing in some 3 houses where he worked , asked her why she did not send this kid to school , the answer was that if he works I get about 250 odd rupees a month and the kid gets food too, a school was an indulgence according to her , had a 15 min conversation with this woman , I could never really convince her why she should send her kid to school.