Why are the poor running away?
A crisis reveals what we are genuinely made up of. All human societies prepare for the worst in their unique ways. But when bad times set in, very few know what they are doing. In India, one can see what a humanitarian problem looks like but not everyone can see what it means. When a country is locked down for the first time in its independent history, the resulting chaos is palpable. India is not Norway. You can’t compare the problem of managing a billion with the sustained discipline of a few millions. What is inexcusable though is the lack of urgency in adopting the correct measures. Even though none of our leaders and social activists make a sound about it — for reasons best labelled under ‘self-interest’ — we face a massive people problem. Our population is simply unmanageable. There must be over 50 countries out there who have a lower population than the number of migrant workers who are on our national highways trying to get home. Faced with such a Herculean task of fighting an impending health crisis, the governments in place ought to plan 3-4 steps at time. Yet, as is our habit, we are still shamelessly slow in responding to the need of the hour. Unlike the entitled idiots who were demanding 5-star luxury in hospital quarantine, these poor folks expect the most basic of amenities. And going by the reports, we have failed them big time.
Charity begins at home but it must flow from your heart, not head. Being ex-hunter-gatherers, we are constantly comparing and nobody can really blame us when we tally people’s alms. XYZ donated 50 bucks. Which to your mental math, is a pretty low figure. Well, here’s the thing: you are in no place to pass judgement. Charity is not an open competition. If you feel XYZ should have donated at least 100 bucks, then maybe you can level it up by donating 150. That’s how philanthropy works, no? Of course, all bars of decency drop when we enjoy voyeuring the crap out of celebrities and judging them for the amount they’ve given away. For instance, when a superrich legend like Sachin shells out a measly ₹50 lacs which dwarfs — no pun intended — in front of actors like Prabhas who pledged ₹4 crores, and a day later, Akshay Kumar tops it up to ₹25 crore, it forces the fellow industrywallahs to loosen their pockets. To them, every little activity is a PR game. And if something good comes out of it, well and great. To suggest that charity can be done anonymously doesn’t hold water when we already know the extent to which the haves go to save on their income taxes. More often than not, you’ll notice in the capitalistic system that the rich remain very poor in giving away their wealth. Comparatively, the so-called poor do a far better job in helping their fellow people. But then, charity must flow from your heart and that’s no place for holding grudges. If possible, donate to whichever charity you support, whatever little amount you can spare. We, the privileged lot, can’t sit on our numb hands and hope things get better on its own.
Have you been reading my blog long enough? If yes, you must have noticed the generalized tone of most of my paragraphs: words like ‘everyone’, ‘all’, ‘we’, ‘you’, etc. It’s a latent attempt to mix in with the now instead of the then about a discussed topic. I can’t really call myself an expert in anything except my failures. That said, thoughts are meant to propel us to dig deeper. With new questions arise newer answers and with newer answers, we build newest perspectives. And perception is indispensable. A person in Jamshedpur tends to believe that the whole of Jharkhand must be like Jamshedpur. It’s not. He needs to get out and see more. So, by definition, it’s necessary that we generalize to seek nuances amongst ourselves. To learn more, we need to unlearn more. And this continuous process demands we see things collectively as well as connectively.
In the 90s, while watching Hindi movies, I used to notice how the heroine jumped onto the bed to cry. She never cried without leaning on something. It could be the nearby wall. Worse, it could be the comfort of her closed palms. Mostly, it had to be a mountain of pillows to dry her nonexistent tears immediately. Used to be a template — Hindi cinema has long moved on from the heroine’s candy interiors — and every time it happened I used to wonder how much fun it would be to have a room of one’s own with a bed in it, and the immeasurable liberty of springing on it whenever you like. Since I grew up in a chawl with common walls and no room or bed of my own, my life goals were quite basic back then.
Until recently, Candidates tournament was the only sporting event of repute going on despite the pandemic fear. The winner gets to challenge Magnus Carlsen for the World Championship title later this year. Held in Russia, under the warm patronage of Vladmir Putin, it covered seven rounds before FIDE (pronounced fee-day) finally called it off. What’s interesting about this development is it took the chess higher-ups several weeks to realize that they can’t carry on — indifferent to the vagaries of the world — just because such prestigious events aren’t heavily dependent on footfall.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, I am learning how to play ukulele. No, this newfound passion has nothing to do with the lockdown (we are currently on its 5th day) and a random change. A mere coincidence that it seems like I’ve picked up a new hobby to fight domestic boredom. YouTube tutorials are very helpful though and I believe I’ll improve a lot in the coming days. Yet, the more I strum, the more I realize that maybe, just maybe, I don’t need to go through the play-a-song routine. How about I play something new? Something that doesn’t fit the textbook? If you think that it lacks a song, then that’s because I haven’t written a song for it yet. Shrugs.
My wife is not my greatest fan by a far stretch. To her cold credit, she doesn’t actively support either of my current obsessions: chess and ukelele.
When I try to tell her that I’ve won a game against a higher-rated player, this is how the conversation concludes.
Me: “You are a very disappointing audience.”
She: “I am a very disappointed audience.”
Similarly, when I play something new (to me) on the musical instrument and turn towards her for validation, she beckons my tone-deafness.
Me: “That’s magic.”
She: “That’s tragic.”
I hope I become a successful chess player-cum-ukule exponent someday so that I can claim that there is no woman standing behind me.
The lowest form of humour is pun. And like most lowly objects of human interest, it takes a lot of effort. Only a pun master can truly appreciate the pain of a fellow pun master. These people don’t consume words the way normal persons do. They break everything down to inject the required amount of humour into words. I know this because I used to be this specimen 5-6 years ago and enjoyed cracking puns. Growing older comes with certain symptoms and one of them is contempt for familiarity. When a newbie displays a clever wordplay, I feel drained because I’ve been on this path before. As much as you respect comedy, you don’t want to pretend like you’ve heard/read something for the first time.
We live in a complicated world but the impatient lot amongst don’t have the mental wherewithal to comprehend it. As a consequence, they like to bucket stuff under good, bad and ignorable. Blatant binaries, if you may. There is no escape from these buckets. Once you are sentenced to your bucket, there is no going back. You’d have noticed this trend while discussing politics as well. Instead of focusing on the strength of your points, they want to know your leaning first. If your leaning matches theirs, then your points turn strong miraculously. Such is the sad state of affairs today. If they can’t fight you in the battle of gob, then they will descend to the lowest level of a discourse: labelling. After all, your label tells you which bucket you belong to.
Since we started this post with the COVID19 crisis, let’s end with it. No surprises there: who’s suffering the most? The poor are seemingly forced to beg not because they are indolent but because they don’t have a job. These are daily wagers who seldom break the hand-to-mouth chain of life. They live from day to day and week to week; they don’t have pension funds and health benefits to lock their future safely. Unfortunately, on the internet, there have been many crass anti-poor hot takes but none can beat the one posed by Balbir Punj: according to this ex-parliamentarian, the poor are fleeing cities because they are seeking vacation. Just when I thought empathy died with that Jaipur woman who refused to allow paid leave to her maid — her now viral video features her kid seated next to her in the car, ostensibly learning from his parent how to be an asshole during a crisis — I am introduced to several new lows in both words as well as actions. Designating the poor as being selfish during a time when almost every second person is scared is like saying that handicapped folks can’t fall in love. There is a poetic injustice to this painted imagery. Yes, when the sword falls, they head towards their villages as each one of us would in a state of disarray. But even in their transit, we mustn’t forget that these people help build cities in ways our educated asses can’t. Without them, our cities wouldn’t know how to stand. Our pampered faces don’t have it in them to face the sun and we depend heavily on these people to run the city for us. It’s a sheer stroke of irony that they are the ones running away now.
