They are not Ours I assert they are not. And never were they. They are the footnotes of our society, far beyond the suburbs of our concern. We are in the Facebook, but in private. They are, too, but in public. Society heeds them not, but they do, society. Society feeds them not, but they do, society. Society knows them, they, too, society. Society’s headache are they, theirs nothing, for society. They are in public eye, though not in notice. They live by themselves, as society by, itself. Society and they are two hard- toasted slices of bread that do not stick, for nothing is there in between to glue them together. The two join only in rough confrontation, but seldom. These people’s strength lies in their urge for survival. After all they are patriots of a country, called Life. They do not challenge, nor do they surrender, as if they were there, and shall be there. They are rooted to the earth as firm as the mangrove swamps that girdle them all about with all the indulgence of a mother for her pre-marital child. Who should they care, who should they fear? They do not beg, rather they hate begging. They do not feed on our throwaways, rather we feed on their giveaways. They fish in the creeks as the latter make their ways involuntarily through many a nook and corner of the metropolis. The creeks vote their struggle for bread, hence in serpentine style they prepare the hideouts for these people, wide and expansive. They alone seem to hear their unvoiced cries of hunger. And when that is satiated, the creeks call forth the full moon and pleasing breezes to lull them, as they then float away their midnight sojourns in their dinghies. Do they then sing out their hearts? Of course, song is their sustenance, their fillip to dash toward a new tomorrow. I have heard them in my midnight wake-ups. Day long they seem to speak in a dialect foreign to all. I guess their dialect is a riddle that is not meant to be solved by any soul. From a Tenth Floor flat in Kharghar, Navi Mumbai, I take pleasurable interest in these footnotes of our society. My eyes have a zoom-lens borrowed from my heart, and it is it that helps me compose this otherwise unsupportable biography of these people, most removed from our eye. You cannot ignore them though they might shy past you in indifference. Why, you want to know, why? Because you want to obliterate them fast lest they are proved worse eyesore to your ken. Because you opine they are the offshoots of a Divine Fallacy as venomous reptiles, burrowing into your much-hallowed Edens of society are. Now tell me, can any man pretend to be a camel pushing forward its obtuse neck for the whetted knife on a Mubarak morn? Instead, you should please elasticize your logic. These people are given a birth by the same SOMEBODY as you are. And once birth-right is given, who would or should rob them of it? It will, I fear, prove man to be the most dastardly villain ever written in human chronicle. Meanwhile, I watch them living in perfect rhyme with the come and go of the tides in the creeks. To my right there go the trains, belittled as caterpillars to my sleepy eyes, unhindered toward Panvel, while to my left cars, blazing headlights on, are smooth-driven toward Pune. Again, no hindrance here. Why at the centre there is concentrated all the objection, all the headache? Remember, headache does not come on its own, it is invited. As we hymn, Requiescat in pace, Let the Dead Remain in Peace, let these cloistered specimens of humanity remain. Who would feed them gratis? After all hunger is as omnipresent to all as God is. We should not dig our own graves to shut ourselves in, in peace. Should we? Think, and then answer.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 16:10:52 +0000
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