By Shaik Zakeer Hussain, TwoCircles.net,
Bengaluru: Unlike many children her age, for two year old Ruhi, the stars, the sun and the moon are still the objects of unlimited fascination, for it is these celestial bodies, which her mother points towards to put her to sleep, just like she did to her elder brother a couple of years ago and would do in some time to the toddler born a few months ago.
For these siblings, the iPads, the iPhones, the Playstations and other marvels of this digital age are alien words, for them these tools do not exist. And if they do exist, which they very much do, then they are not meant for them. What use would an account on Instagram have for any member of her household, who live on streets, what difference would it make to filter their picture with Amaro or Walden or 1977 or any of those 16 others, which made Facebook acquire it for a $1 billion. By the way, what on earth is Facebook? For them a day’s food is reality, anything beyond is phantasm.
Chand Pasha
Thirty three year old Chand Pasha sells toys. He does not make them; he buys them at wholesale shops from the nondescript town of Channapatna, a city 60 km south-west of Bangalore, where toy makers sell their delicate craft work. History has it that, Tipu Sultan invited artisans from Persia to train the local artisans of Channapatna in making these wooden toys. The art still thrives and sustains the livelihood of more than 6,000 people there and many more elsewhere, Chand Pasha is just one of them.
“I make 200-250 a day by selling these toys”, he says lighting a bidi. Though the most hated part of the city, for its inhabitants, but for Pasha and his friends, it is the most desirable one, for it is, when everyone’s vehicles stops in Bangalore’s terrible traffic, that their business thrives. He goes from one vehicle to another asking its occupants to buy his toys. “Most of them, don’t respond, they don’t even look at you, it’s as though, people like me just don’t exist,” he says with little emotion on his face. His face seems to have endured too many abuses of life’s disparities that he has very little expressions left to display. Thankfully, he has saved a little smile, which he expresses, when asked about his education and other things.
Pasha came to Bangalore in search of livelihood a month ago. He says he often travels to different cities in search of work. Though Bangalore is not his usual stop, it definitely seems to be his most ideal one. Hailing from Hyderabad, he does all sorts of work to make ends meet. Apart from selling toys, he sometimes works as a coolie and as manual laborer at construction sites, but he says selling toys has been the most lucrative one.
After the day’s hard work, he returns home. To call it a “home”, would be to make a mockery of people like him. Home for him is a tarpaulin tent, right next to a row of enormous billboards, whose display changes every week. Surrounding these billboards are high-rise apartment buildings, a vertical living concept in trend in Bangalore, thanks to its ever increasing population and lack of space.
Pasha’s neighbours are executives of multinational companies, bankers, industrialists and other high earning individuals. A stark disparity exits between the likes of him and his adjacent residents. Even as jobs are created in multitudes and the country’s GDP shows a progressive trend with every passing year, for the likes of Pasha, their financial difficulties continues to inch up and the gap between the rich and poor stubbornly widens.
For people like him and little Ruhi, it’s a grim reality they live in every day. India’s continuing growth story hasn’t brought in much change, as it has impacted their fellow citizens. In fact, with the rise in the price of basic commodities, it has only become worse. He says “we manage to eat two times a day, sometimes we skip the afternoon meal, sometimes the morning meal,” and at days when he misses the evening meal, he and his family satisfy themselves gazing at those same heavenly bodies that puts Ruhi to sleep.
There cannot exist a society, where there is no economic inequality, however what we need is a society, where such inequality would not create an insurmountable gap between the haves and the have nots, so much so that, there are two contrasting worlds in existence.
Jan Schakowsky, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives once said, “There is a lot that happens around the world we cannot control. We cannot stop earthquakes, we cannot prevent droughts, and we cannot prevent all conflict, but when we know where the hungry, the homeless and the sick exist, then we can help.” Maybe we can at least think.