Choice - A Paradox

Don’t we often go topsy-turvy when we ought to make a choice?

Chocolate ice-cream or butterscotch!

Red velvet or truffle!

Chinese or Italian!

Pizza or Momos !

Grey dress or the blue one !

And the list goes on...

Aah  such a difficult decision to make, no?

Now, imagine a scenario where you don’t get to make any choices. You don’t even have an option to make one. All you have is your body and soul. And what you crave for is “Roti, Kapda aur Makaan”.

Yes! I am talking about the deprived section of our society , the deprived section  of our country.

Ever pondered how these people survive their lives when they can’t even afford the basic stuff?

It is not at all easy to be poor in our country. Some die of starvation while some some toil and moil to survive.

Due to lack of resources, the adolescents  are born weak and are usually malnutrition. 

Ram doesn’t  have clothes to cover his body and a place to live. 

Sham, footpath and a mere blanket is his home. 

Chanda and her family who have a single room in the name of shelter often struggle due to the overcrowded environment. 

The six year old lakshmi has to survive on her own because her parents died of illness. 

There is an uncontrollable spread of diseases among these poor due to the lack of space. There is no proper hygiene and due to illiteracy, no one wants to give a heed to the basic  values. 

Little  Kinjal’s father wants his child to go to school but the destitution has hit him so hard that he can’t even dream of it. Consequently, she is forced into child marriage. At the age of  playing with toys, she is coerced  into the kitchen. 

The need to survive force the 7 year old Lakshman to clean the tables in a restaurant .We often call the 7 year old “ Chottu” not realizing what has led him into this condition.

These people of our society are not just poor, but also the most ignored ones. 

Lali constantly stares at the children enjoying their ice-cream but every time she approaches the ice-cream vendor, she is shooed away. They are the prey of social exclusion. We often wave them aside when we see them. They are discriminated due to their social status.

Life of a poor is already not easy and the pandemic has added salt to it.

Contemplate once, we who still have enough resources to survive  our lives got unnerved in this pandemic, then how precarious would be the condition of our neglected section of the society.

Even our constitution talks about equality but unfortunately being born as poor devoid us from all the opportunities.

At the end, I would just say that it is not a choice that our poor brothers make, that’s how they were born and no one ever desired to be born poor.

So, show some kindness and lend a helping hand wherever you can.

Thanks for reading !

- Reeti Mittal