Face It! (poverty)

The morning begins and you have to go to college. The first is the 9:30 class and your hair is still damp. You couldn’t finish your readings and have society work in the afternoon. It’s going to be a long day so you had charged all your batteries overnight.

Zoning in and out, you check the time, it’s 9, and the battery status, it’s 100%, while waiting for all 5 seats of the daily means of public transport to fill before it leaves. Also zoning in and out, is a small boy who you see sitting on the pavement playing the game of counting the number of empty spaces between traffic.

The empathy in your heart wants to say it out loud and make the dreaded comparison of degrees of privileges between the two of you, but that is not supposed to be a part of your day. To give in to the recognition of the failing systems of society is not the kind of critical thinking you were anticipating. It does not match the lit. major curriculum.

As the 5th seat is no longer vacant and the maximum fare for the trip is secured, the engine pulls and your battery status drops to 99%.

The classes went by, and the unfinished readings didn’t take much mental capacity or the battery which is still at 80%. However the society meeting was centred around animal welfare, and how the animals are treated badly in the streets or in the husbandries, and the current economy does not provide a sustainable solution for it, so you couldn’t help but draw the parallels while zoning in and out again.

Knowing from experience and for certain that the child you saw in the morning is also treated badly and does not have a sustainable future ahead of him, you say to yourself that one should face it, and recognise it as a challenge for society. You’re annoyed but have to accept that the lack of education and economic instability does ruin the lives of the impoverished in India which is still very much a poor country, despite the swanky show. You’re angered at the system for not doing its job and at the algorithm for giving you news notifications that you know are fake. There is no progress, apart from the battery drain; 30% now.

But the day at college is over and it’s time to head back home for everyone. The pick-up point becomes the drop-off point. Everyone takes the same route, this time walking straight past the spot where they had to wait in the morning. You notice the same child standing under a tree with his buddies this time probably planning to do some mischief. You start to imagine how your life would be if you weren’t able to go to school and how it would have impacted you. The thought scares you, and no valid argument comes to your mind that justifies the suffering of the little child. You have to get home but this time the empathy in your heart wins and you decide to face it and do something about it.

That was the day you remember when you look at the faces of the children you’re giving remedial classes to them. You are grateful that you have joined The Aarambh, a student-led NGO which provides for the needs of the poor. You’ve become co-ordinator of the ‘project Sharda’ which is a branch of The Aarambh which is dedicated to providing education to the children of the slums.