A village is structurally more humane.
The Thinnai, the seat placed before each traditional home. Where the tired passerby can stop and rest. And be offered a glass of water, a simple meal. Share a few words.
The day the thinnai fell, and compound walls were raised, that was the beginning of the end.
Someone asked me if I claim village people are more moral.
Structurally a small community, closeness of production and consumption, the gram swaraj is what can be a valid and moral framework. We need to build frameworks that can promote goodness and co-operation, rather than frameworks that promote greed and consumerism and envy (a la modern cities and corporate world.) The human mind has both proclivities. The framework of existance matters.
Yes, there is greater godness in a village, and creater mutual concern in a small, closely connected community. Yes, there are also corrections needed in every structure, and nothing will be ideal. No structure and no man.
Share autos symbolize rural India. The paucity of resources, and the richness of heart.
In an auto 16 people get packed in. Travellers adjust. Understand ing the need of the auto driver to make ends meet. And the need of fellow travelers to get transport.
In the share auto from Kothapeta to Damalcheruvu, a young mother with an infant and a small child needed to get in. Buji got off her seat, and moved to the very uncomfortable wooden plank it facing the sitting passengers, to seat an extra four. On a long ride this plank guarantees an aching back.
This unthinking adjusting, giving, to complete strangers, s giving that is forgotten the moment it is done, is what rural India is about.
A simple civilizational ethos, all but lost in urbane urban world's.
There is poverty in the village.
There is poverty in the city. But starker by far.
The juxtaposition of the poverty with blatant richness rubs the poverty in the faces of the poor. And creates the sense of utter worthlessness.
The village supplies grain and pulses and milk to cities. The city supplies plastics and other non biodegradable waste to villages. It also spends heavily to convince the village that it needs this plastic waste over milk for its children.
The village in this exchange has also exhausted it's groundwater and other resources. Completely.
There is something about cities that isolates and reduces humanity, as compared to villages. There is also similarly something about cars, as opposed to a cycle.
What can we the educated 'teach' a village. A village, that is a living community. Woven with relationships.
Nothing. Except, maybe.
To make money. To get monetized.
To depend on money, more than on relationships.
In a village, while there is food in the village, no one goes hungry. Rice is shared or borrowed.
I wish we had stopped at villages, instead of regressing into cities.
The poor we seek to work for ... are happier,more peaceful, far more generous, rooted in their gods and in their soil, and in their community.
We coming from a far more insecure place. That of the privileged classes of this land. More clinging, less generous, less rooted. With more faith in money, than in the network of give and take of relationships.
And what do I really have to give them ? Many times i wonder.
To make them like me, and my class ?
The urban India and the rural India are two different civilizations. I wish I could seperate them into two different countries. The urban has ruled the rural too long.
Each can live off its own resources, with its own wisdom. Lets watch.
Villages have no sewer systems. No blocked overflowing sewers. No manholes into which the rich human beings lower other human beings to clean their waste.
This is in the here and now in cities.
And these city people presume to teach villages of development and progress. And open schools and NGOs.
People are human everywhere. but the structure of a society decides many things. the size decides the closeness of the production and consumption, and the sensitivity that is born out of that understandind. the smallness means that the children in school are all bonded closely in the community also, and the adults are all amma, avva, pedamma, chinamma, bawa and thatha ... and all keep an eye on their growing up. morals and beleifs and values are similarly handed down.
yes, people are the same everywhere - fundamentally decent. And have got degrarded in the city due to structural influences of size, excess media which also promotes actively the baser qualities of greed, envy and individualism.
No village farmer posts pictures about his enormous pumkin. They are just happy when the yields are good.
No village parent revels in ranks and prizes their child gets. They simply love and feed their children as best as they can.
Nobody goes judgeing muggus that women make before their homes as 1st, 2nd and 3rd. And no women wants hers to be better than that of others !
And so the village stays a happy place. Despite all.
The villages can empower us into understandings of generosity, sustainablity, contentment, simplicity.
And then there are urbans who set out to 'empower villagers' ...
Ignoring the truth that we have little to offer villages except unsustainable practices, insatiable appetites, self centredness.
Sometimes a village is needed to juxtapose and put our positions in perspective.
Positions that we normalize. Validating one another as we walk the same road.
Annasamy Anna, "Even in old age and death, he could not come to see his father. What worth is working at a well paying job, if it does not permit these essential needs."
I wondered. In our communities. Where old age homes are getting normalized. Where children moving far to greener pastures is normalized, Where ageing parents left to care of attenders is normalized. Where occasional visits is the norm.
What answer would we give Annasamy Anna. Of the gains, and the costs. Of our choices.
We choose which world we wosh to be with, work with ...
2 February 2017 at 12:30 ·
"There was a parents discussion on how children wish to be ice cream sellers and pirates. These are upper class kids.
How different the worlds are. My village children want to do a 'degree', and then they hope for the elusive job. Some wish to be nurses. Some teachers. A government teacher job is the dream. They wish to bring some succour to their family."
Paalaguttapalle (Dalitwada)
A world obsessed with selfies and appearance and about looking 40 when one's approaching 50. A dyed world.
Another world where there is just a small mirror on the mud wall, just big enough to neatly put on the bindi. A village world.
Had gone for a meeting with Roopa and Rani.
Rani, later, "They came with pakodas. I did not take any, as I was not hungry. But the people there ! They kept taking. Three, four, five. As if they have never eaten them.
City people are like that. They are not like us.
We eat three good meals. By 9 in the morning we eat hot rice, or the previous days rice. Again at one in the afternoon we eat. And then at night at 8. Nothing inbetween.
City people. A morning cofee, then food at nine. Then again a tea. Then lunch. Then some bajjis in the evening. Then dinner.
Their children are also addicted to food. They keep wanting things. In shops. Our chjildren, if some rare times we make some murukku they have, thats all."
I asked her, "So richer people are more obsessed with food."
She nodded firmly, "Yes, and with everything else also. We are content."
Roopa, when we were in the bus in the middle of the hot afternoon. Seeing the traffic on the road.
"People keep travelling in the city ? When do they work ?".
We would do well to answer that question. In the village people are working in their fields through the day.
24 February 2016 at 08:18 ·
Our village for years managed on water of 5 pots per family of six, and cattle. The people distress sold the cattle, the only asset of landless people. And moved from poverty to destitution.
But we are not Delhi.
And the way our water supply was destroyed is more insiduous and irreversible than breaking pipes - a modernization, a monetization of the economy which needs unsustainable cash cropping, a selling of multiplicity of desires and needs through TV and schooling.
Rama Murthy
24 February 2016 at 08:10 ·
We have the largest gated community in the world. Here water not being supplied for a day is news in the disaster category and gets the forced attention of the entire nation through media, while there are Cities in the country which get water in the mains once a week. If there is a power shortage leading to load shedding for a couple of hours four State Governments are called to account, while there are communities galore which are lucky to get power for a few hours a day. If the atmosphere is foul here for a few days in a year to breathe, it makes hourly news and the SC steps in; while entire Districts in the same country have their water supply / ground water contaminated with fluoride and worse- of course a different sort of pollution but equally lethal. The GC is called New Delhi. It is better to do something about it it before the masses wake up to the injustice of it all.
Because I am fluent in the language of my erstwhile colonizer I have a superior status in my free country. My neighbour fluent in Telugu, and deeply wise in the stories of Mahabharatam that she relates into the night on a mat under the starry skies in the village, also considers me superior.
That’s is because of our dependence on the western world.
No leader talks self sufficiency, and that is why we are failing as a nation.
that is the colonial mindset that we have inherited and one most of us continue to use it to our advantage.
The soul of this country is religious - village or city.
Every tree, and well, and anthill is a reminder of divinity.
Passed this on a bylane in Chennai. A peepul tree.
The elite see this as 'blocking the footpath'. the ordinary people bow before the gods and proceed.
Once when i used the phrase "my village people", a progressive lady 'activist' on FB objected saying i was claiming ownership of the people. I was taken aback. Another more grounded friend told me that "my" in India means responsibility, more than claim.
Similarly the other day a friend here explained to me that "adhikara" means 'responsibility' more than 'right'. So when the the brahmin was given the adhikara of teaching scriptures that was what was meant. It made sense. Most folk stories have 'poor brahmins' and 'rich traders'.
Villages, and their ethos, and their gods, and their sustainable livlihoods are what can save the earth.
We do not need to school them. We need to learn at their feet.
We can choose not to - at our own peril.
We need those systems that nuture humanness.
Small localized communities where man can relate to man. Where the producer understands the consumer. Where simple equations replaces complexities.
Villages.
In our village government school the children come early to sweep, sprinkle water anmd make a muggu/ rangoli.
As the bell rings, the children and teacher remove their slippers outside the classroom. A small prayer is said each morning before starting studies.
Before the midday meal the children sweep the floor, sit, say a small prayer, eat the simple meal of rice and a dilute dal. Then they sweep up the place and clean it.
As its a single teacher, the older children oftem are helping the younger children with their readings.
After school is done, they again sweep up the room.
... the urban school childen walking into classrooms with their shoes. Eating lunch without saying a prayer of thanks. Having servents to sweep their classrooms
... will never reach the simple dignity and rootedness of the village child.
... feel grateful our child began her student life in the village single roomed, single teacher primary school. It sets the compass for life.
The white man thought that India was full of backward, superstitious people who needed to be saved from themselves. That was the white man's burden.
Today, when after a fair understanding of living with a village community for 20 years, as a neighbour and a member of the village, I say that villages are the sanest part of India, sadly impoverished, there is offended objection.
Categorical objections come from people who may not have even moved to and lived in a village for 2 years. Their claims are village is castist, patriarchal and superstitious and full of evil khap panchayats.
The white man did a brilliant job of crafting his own clones!
Evil panchayats indeed. And don't they use cow dung there? Ewww..
That also i have been told. That patriarchy is proved by that women mop their floors with cowdung. When i say that i too have for 20 years, and that no woman feels oppressed by that, and that its actually a work of skill, i am also dismissed as a 'stupid brainwashed village woman' !
I suppose living in a city, and having a poorer woman come and mop their floors id to them the epitome of gender fairness.
If I tell a village woman of fifty that she looks forty, she will take me to Thathappa of Madavaripalle, and get me treated with some mantrams. And get an antram also tied on my arm for good measure. It will be seen as pralaapam - mindless prattling.
And when she tells me I have greyed it is a simple statement. Nothing more and nothing less.
There is a comfort when forty is forty, and fifty is fifty. Where did the urban woman lose it ?
Roopa, "Here is the city so much water is wasted. With so many taps in a home."
"But Roopa, in the village also in the half hour that water comes in our street taps, we waste water. By the time we put a pot inside the home and come the second pot is overflowing sometimes. It not like the days when we used to draw water from the well."
Roopa, "Yes, but there is some wastage only in that half hour. At homes we use the water carefully. When we wash dishes with water from a vessel instead of from a tap so much less water is used."
She is right. In villages water is used with far more respect. Like everything else.
Here in cities we teach children homilies. "Turn off the tap when brushing teeth." But wastage stays excessive elsewhere as in washing machines or air coolers. Or lawns. Or running taps being opened for all needs.
A village where simplicity is inbuilt where all unnecessary facilities are limited, the demand on resources stays far far lower.
That is still the main part of our country. If only we can learn from them. Of how to structure simplicity. Maybe of how tapless homes are still comfortable and happy homes.
Every week I have some plastic covers in my plastic drum. However well I wash them, they will finally end in some landfill. And even if the cows dont eat them because they are washed, they will end up in the stomachs of the whales like what were washed ahore the other day, strangled with ingested plastics. The harm we cause with each day's living, do we do any balancing good. I doubt if I do. I dont.
In the village, they dont buy tea, sugar, 1/2 pack of dals. They buy a little dal, and a lttle jeera or turmeric for a week in the weekly santa, which is packed in a small peice of newspaper. They are far less damaging than I can even aspire to be. We will never reform enough.
If we save villages, simpler consumptions, simpler processes may still be saved.
Why there is 'depression' among the rich, and why the poor in my village despite every unbearable travail are not 'depressed'.
"One is able to drive past a garbage bin in an a A/c car where ordinary people are rummageing in them. And one is able to drive past this to a restaurant." This causes an inner discord, and eads to mental maladies.
The man who comes singing mellifuulous songs at the door, and asks "Bhavathi Bhiksham Dehi." The man who comes dressed as Bhima, with a sack where he collects rice.
To whom we all gave rice. One of the million livlihoods in a village.
In a city a person who dresses up thus and goes from home to home, is seen as a begger. Because the hearts of those in cities is small, very small.
21 April 2017 at 22:19 ·
Today we were all reading a CBT book, 'The Banjara Boys', as our daily English studies. With Jayanthi and Kavya. In both their homes every spare rupee has to be diverted to rice, and to health debts which have built up.
This story was about a well off boy who wanted a cycle, and whose parents advised him to earn for it. So he was paid to do chores at home. And to keep his shelves clean. And to play with his younger brother. And to do his homework on his own.
My village children do all the house chores, starting very early. They look after younger siblings who are sometimes dropped off at school with them, as the mother goes for coolie. They study hard on their own, as the parents are illiterate. They do all this on undernourished bodies. They do not demand a cycle either.
The starkness of the differance of the two worlds, of the Entitled, and of the People.
Intelligence is over-rated.
Intellectual conversations are over-rated.
IITs are over-rated.
The truth lies elsewhere. In the field where the farmer slogs and grows food for all. Without pretentiousness, in humility.
Roopa, in the bus on Chennai streets. Midday traffic jam time.
"What are people doing in mid afternoon heat, crawling in vehicles ? In the village we work hard till midday, and then the whole world rests through the hot afternoon, and again after a couple of hours we start work."
A city life is turned upside down in every way. And we have simply normalized craziness.
Chennai has some nice parks. With sand and slides and swings. And a walking path for the adults. Children of all sizes and shapes used to run free through long evenings. Playing together, rolling around together.
Today we went to the park taking Vaishnavi from the village. And the demographic pattern was very different. From what I remembered.
It was full of children today as always. Happy boisterous children. on swings and slides. And making mud castles.
But mostly children from the lower economic strata.
While in a sense I was happy that an lovely public space was available to these children, it is also not a happy fact.
That the few spaces where the two groups of children meet, intermingle, play and make sand bridges, irrespective of differences of class, have almost vanished.
And the invisible walls seperating the two get higher and higher.
Also where do the poor little rich kids go to in summer evenings. If not to open airy public parks with swings and see saws and slides ?
Thats another unspoken tragedy ...
If only the rich knew what all they have lost, as they accumulated their monies.
If only the urbans know what richnes ,and spaces, and community they have lost, as village after village stands sacrificed to their consuming.
If only I could show them ... they might also join in creating a better world for all, including themselves.
Thats all it takes. For contentment.
A simple meal. The shade of a tree.
For a dog. That has also recently lost a leg in an accident. Some rice from our lunch. Shade
For a çow. The grass. The shade of a tree.
For a man. A simple meal.The shade of a tree. The towel on his head spread on the ground. A siesta.
If we can face simplicity. Own up simplicity. Claim the happiness therein.
There is enough for all. On earth.
Todays morning picture. Down our street.
The last drop of milk being carted away from the village.
Not a drop left behind for village children.
In the days of lower milk production.
Before the so called White Revolution
The milk stayed in the village. The children had milk.
The statistics that speak if Growth and Development.
Of higher milk production. Of rising GDP.
Have these realities and stories behind them ...
When every so called moden success story needs to be revisited. And real implications seen. In brutal honesty.
Malls will consider Eashwaramma and Sasi and Kavya unfit to enter their premisis. So I consider malls unfit for me.
Gandhiji would not enter a temple that untouchables could not enter. Now we need to refuse to enter these perverted 'temples of modern India' where the 'poor' cannot enter.
When I speak of the deep goodness of the village I have been with with close to over two decades, and I am met with disbelieveing looks and comments, it sometimes gets very disheartening. And lonely. Because one wants to communicate what one has seen and learnt. And i seek out the few who understand.
I was telling Mukundan this today at the clinic and he said Gandhi faced this long years ago. His own group of leaders were unable to see the richness of villages. And they were so westernised that they were unable to accept the greatness in the soul of India, in her villages.
Again today ... this is where we are. Where the villager feels inferior, the farmer feels smaller, And the English speaking compatriot feels superior. Cry, the beloved country.
15Shyamala Sanyal, Rajeshwari Ganesan and 13 others
10 Comments
Jus SheejaI am truly sorry i have been part of the disbelieving commenting ones. But much of this unacceptance happens because you are unwilling to accept any good qualities that the others see in their part of the world. To you the smile of a child in palaguttapalle is most beautiful but for me I see no difference between the children in the village and the children in my class. When you negate the goodness and love and camaraderie that i experience day in and day out it is disheartening to me too. And about these inferior and superior words, you have said it a hundred times. i have two girls. The complexes are in full display everyday. I dont go to the one who doesnt feel inferior and tell her that she feels superior and she is wrong. But i definitely point out all the good qualities of the other and show that she is not. I have many times wondered why your posts disturb me though every post has a good message, points out the need for people to understand realities. But you wrap it with so much of finger pointing and make it impossible for people to take the pill and cure themselves. If the english speaking have a superiority complex then you have a superiority complex about your village. And complexes never help anybody. all this is said with great regard and respect. If you could just believe that.
Suraj KumarJus Sheeja Gandhi wrote a letter to Hitler asking him nicely to stop being Hitler. I'm sure he forgot to write in his memoirs about how futile an idea that was. He may have just wanted to cuss him and *maybe* that would have caused some shame and moved Hitler from his position. I think
Aparna Krishnan (and me too) in some ways are trying to show the superior side of a world we've seen and touched... but one which the city dweller, due to all the entitlements, refuses to see. What you're saying here, though, is that Gandhi should have continued writing to hitler everyday in nice language. I frankly think he was wiser and did a better job of using his time
Jus Sheejai try to take messages from Fb to my class. At the end of a session i find so much change of heart in the kids. In my field one cannot expect blaming and pointing fingers to have any effect. they maybe good vents for frustration and anger but something to have maximum effect these never work. As for the comparison if Gandhi had written again and again then he too would have to keep a certain nicety. He wrote jus once you say. But Aparna writes every day.
Aparna Krishnanyes, i write everyday
- many times. And those who find the words too strong I am sure have stopped following me, as I have myself stopped following many. I am sure there are many gentler, kinder writers.
Jus SheejaDont get any ideas Aparna i am neither going to unfriend you nor unfollow you.
Aparna KrishnanAnd yes, I feel villages are superior spaces. And it is never 'personal' (I hope !). My search is for the structures and systems that can permit a saner world. Yes, a city is a deeply disconnected entity, and thereby the people also become scheisophrenic. Otherwise we would not be able to eat in glass walled hotels with hunger outside the glass wall watching us. People are not bad - the goddness in a Gandhi is potentially there in every heart. Perverted systems can pervert people. Yes, I point fingers at the city, at the well off (including myself), because it is in this that the deep anguish of the villages is rooted today. I am sure my posts are disturbing ! The truth is very disturbing today - and I am disturbed, and I write of it.
Aparna KrishnanSun Son, yes Gandhi trying to reach to Hitler does seem to border on the ridiculous. But in today world, we need the ridiculousness of faith and trust and beleif amd hope and humility and sacrifice. Anyway i am sure you understand what I am trying to say - because understanding happens only when we have already reached a certian realisation within us, and some words strike a chord there.
Aparna KrishnanAnd
Sun Son, there is an implication in your comment of the city dweller being compared to Hitler ! I do not know if it was inteded !! But on thinking - as risk of more 'finger pointing' - I would agree
. It is our urban lifestyle and demands that has caused vaster genocides in the villages than Hitler ever managed to do. I would go so far as to say that Hitler knew he was a murderer. We with our fridges and ACs and cars, and dreams and ambitions, have caused the global warming, that has caused this killer drought in villages, where there is no livlihood or food anymore - and we countinue to feel our hands are unbloodied. Those who with their sweat and blood fed us are today hungry - and I do not see the acheing pain which would lead to vast actions in the hearts of the urban people. And I am unable to present all this kindly and gently and sensitively - that would need a greater person than me.
Aparna KrishnanAnd Jus Sheeja, i have no interest in sugar coating pills. The truth is bitter, very bitter. Yes, the time has come for finger pointing and more - it is time for a revolution. Only my village people will eat to half a stomach, and share of their limited resources. they call it Dharma, and they will not burn houses. i sometimes wish they would. Those who find the truth harsh, and my words strong are most welcome to unfriend me. I have had a small and much loved circle in the real world, and am happiest thus. Will be happy with a small circle in the virtual world also. Till we learn to consume less so that the starving can eat to their three quarter stomach, till we turn off our ACs and cars and all else that is causeing the disater of failing rains ... my words cannot be kinder and gentler. Unless the city children refuse to step into hotels walking past hungry children trying to sell colouring books for a living, I am not able to be kind. I do not blame them - I blame my generation for giving them such a disconnected upbringing, and a focus on all wrong priorities in life.
My village people are malnourished and poor. They feed every mendicant at their door respectfully, seating them and serving them.I also have rich friends who have a psycological inability to give.
I have only respect my village people. I have only pity for the rich. It is a clarity that has distilled over years.
There are so many elite words floating around. Minimalism is one of them.
My village people live in neat, one roomed, homes. With clothes hung on nails on the mud wall. With straw mats rolled and tucked away in the roof and unrolled at night to sleep on. With a fireplace built into the wall at one corner of the hut.
They have never claimed 'minimalism' or discussed their 'carbon footprint' proudly.
Kokilashree AlangaramAparna Krishnan The people in my village buy multiple smartphones ,bikes and even cars. Even if they dont eat well...Where is Minimalism here
Media has done its fair share in making them strongly believe that what they have IS NOT ENOUGH
Aparna KrishnanYes, advertisment has succeeded, as has TV. That is our cladd agenda. Still, compare their carbon footprint with yours. It would be a fraction. Unless your villages are far better off than mine.
Kokilashree AlangaramAbsolutely yes their carbon footprints are lesser than ours, just feeling sad about how mass consumerism is a multi headed monster now
Aparna Krishnanyes. but we need to realize that we are individually and as a class still the biggest consumers ! We are trapping the others also.
Psychology seems to be a favourite choice in college. Mainly western psychology.
Psychologists of different western paradigms are offering their expensive offerings. But all based on western theories.
Our rich traditions of healing the mind stay largely untouched. By the urbane urbans.
But the practices stay alive outside the metros. Pooja, japam, mantrams. Go puja. Nagamma puja. Listening to talles from the puranas. Daiva vyapashraya chikitsa. Of far greater potency than they can even guess.
धीधैयामादवानं मनोदोषौषधं परम
Dhee Dhairya Atmadi vigyanam manodoshaushadham param.
Dhee – improving intelligence
Dhairya – improving courage
Atmavijnana – Self realization are the means to treat mental imbalance. Ch 1, Verse 26
Ashtanga Hrudayam, Sutra Sthanam
I threw a lot of plastic covers that I has been collecting with the vague intention of recycling. From packageing of dals, to packaging of tea. Finally I gave up and today I took it to the bin at the street end. My contribution to tha landfill.
In the village. In the weekly santa. Dals are bought in small quantities, 200g. Thats all the buying power. This is tied in paper and string and placed carefully in the small bag they get for the weekly provisions. Simply. Humbly. Quietly. Without jargon.
My carrying a cloth bag, into which so many prepackaged items go, does not help.
What may help is if I face my privilege. My elitism. My consumption patterns. Vis a vis a village.
A cloth bag is just a first step. Just a reminder. Of the path to walk on.
The way back.
My daughter when she was three, was eating her lunch at home, when Lakshmamma came in. Her friend Vishnu told her, "Raa koorcho, annam thinu avva, cheppu." ("Say, 'Come sit and eat grandmother."). Now when she eats, it is second nature for her, as for eveyone on the village, to offer food to whoever comes or passes by.
In a city, people sit and feast in full glare behind glass walled restaurants. Oblivious to the hunger on the other side. This is brutality.
My village people use and protect sustainable technologies.
Of building with mud, of weaving coconut fronds into mats, of cooking on firewood, of curing with cowdung, of the medicines from 500 local herbs.
Should not my country pay them for this service. Should not we ?
... we create and live off unsustainable destructive skills. Should we not be fined ?
Short answer: Stop subsidizing unsustainable technologies.
Fancy expensive alternative schools have a raw foods cooking period, a room cleaning period.
In my village the primary school children go home and light the wood fire and cook rice before their mothers come from coolie work. They sweep the yard and home, and light the lamp beore the small god picture in their one roomed hut.
So did our daughter from the time she was five or so.
A simple life lived without pretensions is what can save the earth. Villages are what can still teach the world a way to live simply, humbly and well. If the others have the humility to listen.
Already an old woman, white haired and fragile, had spread her plastic sheet on the pavement and was arranging her small plastic items there. Some tea filters, some rattles, some plastic scubbers. The entire outlay, her shop, may have cost a few hundreds.
A little further her two grandchildren were playing. Pretty girls. The elder was a fair child, maybe ten. The curly haired younger child was a dark beautiful three or four.
When we passed by the elder one mechanically held out her palm. I steeled up. Facing my shame. At the world we have created.
PaalaGuttaPalle. Dalitwada.
Many years ago. Our daughter was three or four. I remember. When another child walked into our home eating a biscuit, she spontaneously held out her hand. An older friend, maybe five years old, gently pulled back her hand, "Chei jaapa koodadhu." (Never put out your hand and ask.).
The same community which taught her this, also taught her this. When she was eating, my neighbour walked in. She stopped by her, knelt, smiled and told her, "Thinnetappudu pilu. 'Raa koorcho, annam thinnu.'" ("While eating, call others. 'Come, sit and eat too.'")
Lessons learnt from babyhood. For a lifetime. By all children. To never beg. And to share what one had. The last meal. Even.
Glass walked restaurants. The rich feast. Unheeding of the hunger that stares at them.
The poor watch their poverty juxtaposed with excess. Their pride crumbles.
And when pride and self respect crumbles. Everything crumbles.
And the earth trembles. At the wrongs she has nurtured.
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