Yesterday I had posted a picture of a simple birthday party in the village. And the gleam in the small childs eyes. A happy picture.
There is the other side. Many of the children there sharing that cake will not be able to afford a cake for their birthday. And they feel poorer than ever on their birthdays.
i see that happenning.
Ever since this birthday cake entered our village portals. The sense of divide among the children has increased.Even in this poor landless village. Children who can have a cake on their birthdays, and chioldren who cannot. Two classes.
I have also been guilty to this, When i would bake a simple cake on the woodstove for our daughters birthday, when she was three and fout, thinking it would be an occasion for all the children to enjoy. As light is a god, Jyothiramma. we lit 3 lamps on the cake, instead of blowing candles. I has learnt in the village that to blow out candles was wrong. But there was more to it - the celebrations itself, however simple, was the problem. I understood only as time passed. The repurcussions.
But we were just a small detail in the tapestry. As the relatives in towns and as TV serials showed people creamed cakes and candles and birthday songs, the fire of desire was fanned. More and more.
In every one of our excesses, in our land of poverty, somewhere, in some heart, we light the lamp of envy, and increase despair.
There is more to the virtue of complete simplicity, than we may realize.
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