On my way to the office, there's a
stretch of road where many nomadic families live in makeshift tent homes along
the roadside. They also run shops, mainly selling “toys”. At first, I found it
interesting that they had chosen selling “toys” as their business, but after a
while it became clear. They have got a little army of their own kids!
I have never cared to scrutinize them,
but I see only a few of the men near their shops/tents, perhaps many go out for
other vocations. And the women are not seen too, perhaps busy cooking in the
backside of their tents. But the children are always jumping around that whole
area.
One fine day, I noticed that a man had
bought a soft toy “giraffe” from their shop and was trying to put it on his
motorbike to carry it home. The “giraffe” was big: like at least two feet tall!
I had never seen a giraffe as a toy, and I could never imagine why someone
would buy a “giraffe” for a kid. There are all sorts of other popular animals,
like elephants, tigers, lions, deer, dogs; all these are popular in the soft
toys category. But the man, who was in his late 60s, had bought a giraffe! I
remember imagining that a kid was going to be very happy that day, while I
passed by.
Another interesting popular thing they
are seen selling is “inflatable kiddie pool”. Made of PVC, these can be
inflated, and after being filled with water, small kids can sit or play in it.
I never saw any such interesting things in my childhood.
Coming back to those nomads. Sometimes
I wonder if our world is going in the right direction or wrong. We have people
like MS Dhoni or Abhishek Bachchan who got only one kid each, while they can
afford to give fabulous lives to a dozen. And on the other hand, we have these
nomads and poor people who got no life of their own and their children play in
the dirt whole day, but they keep producing children like the world is going to
end tomorrow if they don’t. Our Prime Minister wants to make India a developed country
A.S.A.P., and our main opposition party wants to do “wealth redistribution” in
society. All the while, these poor families keep producing armies of offsprings
every year.
Well, I do not have any problem with
these kids. They are always nice, and it is always nice to see kids around. It
is what they are going to turn out to be after they grow up, worries me. At
some level, I think our world would have been a lovely place if kids were going
to only play with toy giraffes or inflatable pools. But at some point, they are
going to get old and need livelihood and means to contribute to the society. I
don’t know how many roadsides they will be able to keep capturing every year,
for their tent-houses and toy shops.
I know that in such moments we need to
introspect instead of pointing fingers. But at some point, we are going to end
both introspecting and finger pointing, and like everything else, we shall
vanish in the thin air. At that point, it will not be about what we thought or
did, it will be more about what happened or got done by the collective us,
while we were around. In the shadow of these thoughts, I find myself feeling
more powerless than I ever have before.
- Rahul
