The beef eaters

It is very difficult to describe how it feels to lose someone that you love. Someone who is central to many lives, often many young lives, who will have no future. Their lives will be a miserable journey without any destinations. A kid will not have something to eat and a mother will have no support when she requires most.

However, it is more difficult to understand the loss of emotion and callousness that has crept in our society. It is unimaginable how a crowd assumes an identity which is so cruel and horrible different from the identities of its individual constituents. Was no-one in the crowd felt the pain of an old man being thrashed to death? Was no-one having any cognisance that they all are committing the gravest crime of their life? Are we becoming so uncontrollably enraged and cruel that human lives have lost meaning? We killed a person because we suspected him of eating beef or killing a cow. I am a vegetarian and devout Hindu but I can never explain what happened in Uttar Pradesh.

More than a decade back, when I spotted Beef on the menu card in a hotel in Mumbai, I walked out of the hotel without a second thought. I could not imagine having food in a place that serves beef. A few years later, I spotted the slaughterhouses near Jama Masjid in Delhi and I ran with a handkerchief on mouth to control the unstoppable nausea that was triggered by the ghastly sight of hanging carcasses. I vomited as soon as I walked out of those narrow alleys. These were my autonomic reactions. Gradually, I developed my tolerance and understood the cultural and social dimension of food habits.

A few years later, I visited a few african countries and I had eat in those hotels where they cooked everything. I managed to survive, often starving myself whenever I could not find something that I can identify and verify. But I ate in those hotels. I could easily see that people on the next table were having steak. I avoided looking there but I knew there is no fault of the people here. They are not even aware of my food preferences and of the fact that what they are eating is a taboo for me.

My hatred for meat eating never translated into this brutal reaction even at the thought level. Today, I feel sad. I am not aware of what is real story there. But whatever be the story, a mob brutally killing a person can never be justified. 

The Pain of Poverty

When my car stops at a railway signal, I often try to avoid making eye contacts to beggars who are knocking at my car window in expectation of a few rupees. Whenever I look into their eyes, I invariably reach out to my wallet and find out a 5,10 or 50 rupee note and give that to them. 

I know many of these beggars are not needy. They do it everyday and they may be part of an organised cartel but I don’t think too much about this. There might be one or two among them who have no other options but to beg. I don’t think anyone will willingly choose begging as profession. They might get sucked into begging and then find no way out. Most of the people who are begging are kids, women or old homeless people. 

Sometime I know very well that the money I give might be spend on buying a smoke, liquor or some sweets. But even we spend money on that. Our justification is that we earn that money. But we indulge in these things to get some happiness or satisfy our addiction. My contribution or not, these people will find a way to satisfy the addiction. Sometime, in absence of lack of money,  they will do something that might permanently (selling their body for money, doing illegal things for others etc..) harm them or others. 

I have often given people a 500 rupee note and walked away. Just to give them that unexpected happiness. I am not bothered what they spend the money on. But the look on their face is worth it. 

I wish we had a systematic and functioning beggar rehabilitation plan. Beggars do not have any place to get them treated for even the common of diseases. These disease prove fatal for them. They do not have schools where their kids can be accepted and given quality education. In fact, most to the kids are physically and mentally handicapped due to lack of nutrition and care in their early stages. Studies suggest that nutritious food and care in pregnancy decides the future development of the kid. If they do not get the required nutrition their brain is underdeveloped. 

If we want to get the beggars away from the streets we need to invest in resources and facilities that economically less fortunate people can avail. I know of many cases when many of my friends tried to get the beggar kids admitted into the schools but kids relapsed into begging. First, their parents were dependent on the money the kids were bringing once the kids started to go to school they started starve. Second, the school kids looked down upon them. Parents and kids both were not keen to continue. 

We cannot just do one thing and hope that everything will change. We have gradually eradicate this evil. Unfortunately, in the giddying growth of our urban centres and development focusing on the needs of the middle class, the pain of poor people is not felt by many who are in charge of making potent decisions.  

Changing Lives

I tried my best to balance myself on the bricks that were strategically placed in the annoying puddle of sewage that was coming out from the nearby households. The bricks were there to help us cross the puddle without getting our feet dirty.  Every morning I had to cross the puddle, whose size grew randomly, in order to go to my school. There were not many student keen on doing this, they had several excuses to not go to the school. And, not many people were bothered. School for many parents was the place to park their kids when the kids were being a nuisance at home and/or they were not old enough to contribute in the agriculture or household work. My family and I both were exceptional. My family sent me school for studying and I never tried to find excuses, like many other kids, to not go to school.
Our village was fortunate  to have a primary school as there were no schools in the surrounding five-six villages. Students from those villages walked, with a home-made bag and a old grain/fertiliser sack, 4-5 kms every day to attend our village school. The sack was filling in for lack of desk and bench.
Our school three teachers, two rooms and zero toilets. But we never needed a ‘toilet’, there were many options. But anyway, for us learning was always dependent on teachers and not on the infrastructure.
Our teachers used the school time to pursue their many hobbies (such as reading Gulshan Nanda and Kushwaha Kant novels) and occupations (scouting for good buffalos for their business) but still they found sometime to teach us. All the five classes were held together, as there was only one room that was functional. It was not a big issue as there were no syllabus or routine to be followed.
Surprisingly, amidst all of this we learnt a few things. Of course, not all the students benefitted equally. But some really did well. I am one of those. I look back and find that most of my classmates never studied beyond class ten. A lack of resources, family pressure and lack of understanding of impact of education frittered away all the possibilities of developing the future potential.
Today, in hindsight I understand that a better education system, better teachers and a better pedagogy would be have done wonders to many human lives. And, there can never be a more noble profession than being a teacher. I would surely like to be a teacher.