Homeless Deaths and Apathy

She calls out to the man on the street
"Sir, can you help me?
It's cold and I've nowhere to sleep,
Is there somewhere you can tell me?"
 

This is a small excerpt of Phil Collin's song, Another Day in Paradise. I'm sure most of you have heard it at some point of your life. Its a rather honest song, speaking of the bitter and harsh realities of the world we live in.

 

This first verse speaks of a homeless woman. It's cold, and she, being homeless, does not have a bed to sleep in. This is the case is many cities across the world, but what I'm trying to talk about here is the recent headlines regarding the deaths of various homeless people due to the bitter and harsh cold in North India.

 

India has roughly 1 billion people, according to the World Bank estimate in 2011. Did you know, that according to the Action Aid programme in 2003, there are roughly 78 million homeless people in India? That's 7.8 percent of our population.

 

How many of you take notice of these people? How many of you go out of you way to help them? And no, school/college club activities don't count. How many of you have stepped out of your home to look at the outside world. For us, it is just "another day in paradise". For them, it is a fight for survival every day, in a concrete jungle filled with apathetic people.

 

How many of us are even aware of the various thing happening in our country when the media does not report it? How many of us CARE before the media TELLS us to care?

 

Granted, the media is doing their job. They are to report what goes on the country and the world, but now, the unfortunately truth is that we don't care. We don't care about the millions of children dying in Africa. We don't care about the children and students in America who get shot. We don't care.

 

What do we care about? Ourselves.

 

He walks on, doesn't look back
He pretends he can't hear her
Starts to whistle as he crosses the street
Seems embarrassed to be there.

 

They beg, they endure, they cry. They want to be able to afford food for themselves and their children and themselves. They want to be able to send their children to school and not have to destroy their childhood to make them work so that there is food on the table. They want to be able to depend on something, to have a constant that they can lean back on. That yes, we have this.

 

But they don't.

 

We walk past slums every day, and many of us make disgusted faces at the unsanitary condition. We consider them a black mark on our country. We displace them to make more buildings for people with money to own, but never stop to think of the people who had made their HOME there. But we never stop to think, WHY are they unsanitary?

 

We don't realise it. We don't see beyond the "ugly" facade.

 

So when they die, no one cares.

 

Where are the human rights institutions?

 

I think the better question is, WHERE ARE WE?

The Plea of a Dreamer

I suppose that most of you think we're naive. That we have a world view that is rose-tinted and that when we step into the BIG BAD WORLD, that world view will be shattered. Others think its cute, that it is merely a stage that we will grow out of.

But what most people don't get is the simple fact that without the Dreamer, there would be no change. Without the Dreamer, there wouldn't be a world. Without the Dreamer, there would be no transport, no countries, no laws.

Because without a Dreamer, there is no innovation. The Dreamer strives on Idealism. It is his petrol to his car. Without the belief that there CAN be a change, the Dreamer is merely a Cynic, cleverly disguised in the garb of the Dreamer.

So when we 'grow up', as you say, we can become anything. The Cynic faces the 'harsh reality'. Others will go to the path of the Sentimentalist, and seek and place emotional value in every occurrence in the world around them, allowing it to shape them as it will. As Oscar Wilde once said, in his play Lady Windermere's Fan, "What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market place of any single thing.”

The Dreamer's path is the path that very few choose, and even then, many veer off this path to safer and more compliant paths. This is not because this path is more difficult than any other path. Its is because the world we live in, regardless of its need for Dreamers, tries to crush all innovation, any ideas that may displace the "ruling ideology".

Sociologically speaking, this is normal, and the compliant often end up attempting to socialise the thought process into the possible deviants- Do not try anything out of the ordinary or too risky. There is no harm in staying on the safe side. In Sociology, it repeatedly stated, particularly under the Marxist perspective, that society runs on conflict. There will always be people who are oppressed and then those who rise up on top.

In our society, it is the Dreamer who take on the role of the Oppressed and the Cynics and Sentimentalists who take the role of the Oppressor. Regardless, there are people who stay strong and endure the taunts of society. The taunts that tell them that they are naive and that they look at the world through rose-tinted eyes.

But it is the Dreamers who stand tall in history- Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Buddha, Maria Montessori, the Wright Brothers, Amelia Earhart, Abraham Lincoln, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Aung San Suu Kyi.

These are all men and women who stood tall in the face of adversity, willing to believe that their dreams were not stupid, were not naive and were attainable. They reached for the sky and they got it. They lost a lot on their way there, but they gained just as much.

So when you tell us that our dreams are 'invalid', when you tell us that they are all pipe-dreams that cannot be actualised, when you tell us that we are naive little 'children' who know nothing about the world, remember this. We may be young, but that means our eyes aren't jaded like yours. That means that we often see the world for what it is, and not what people want us to see it as.

Because while there is nothing wrong with being a Cynic or a Sentimentalist, there is nothing wrong with being a Dreamer.

Because we are the people standing up for our rights. We are the people working to change the world, to stop global warming, to end war and striving for peace. We are the ones who want equality, to have safe roads to drive and walk on. We are the ones to stand up and make a stand against the disgusting habits of society while so many of you stay at home and pity others.

So when you look at us with that scorn in your eyes, it is not because we are inferior. It is because a part of you wishes to be like us. And you need to understand that there is nothing wrong with that desire. But making us feel like we are the ones who are wrong, like we are the ones to blame will only take this world several steps back.

So here on, please see that we too have our use. We are not useless. We are not stupid. We are not naive.

We are human beings like you, out to heal a world filled with hatred and misery that is so deeply embedded that an entire species feels it like a unanimous, collected heartbeat.



 

The Rape of The Woman

"He touched me here, and here, and here,"
She quietly stated at court,
While the bastard who had done all this,
Just stood there and wanked off.

When he did this horrific, disgusting deed,
She had screamed Herself hoarse,
Begging, wailing, "HELP ME PLEASE!"
But no one heard Her shout.

Her body was her own, it still is,
But every time She walked down the road,
This disgusting man followed Her around,
Leaving Her shaken and disturbed.

"She seduced me," he said,
And the girl just gasped,
For She had never even spoken to the man,
He had come and taken,and taken again.

When She had gone to the authorities,
They looked at Her like She was dirt,
Her clothes torn, Her eyes were red,
And blood flowed down from Her legs.

No one heard Her when She was raped,
And they refused to listen afterwards,
She was alone and in pain as well,
And voiceless in a faux democracy.

No one let her file Her claim,
And even when She did,
In the end She found Herself,
In a court, ashamed of Herself.

So tell me now, is this right,
For the victim to be blamed,
For a disgusting act performed on Her,
By the wicked and deranged.

Tears flow down our eyes today,
From the eyes of an entire nation,
But I ask you now,
Where were you when this happened?

You were locked up in your warm little house,
And even though you heard Her pleas,
You never moved, you never stirred,
For it was normal on the street.

After all, who asked Her to dress this way,
Like an indiscriminate slut,
A whore who more or less asked for it,
To be forced and thrown around.

It is only when its in your house,
That you will scream and shout,
Because after all, no one else matters,
Just me, myself and I.

You blame the police, the judge, the Government,
But you never see,
Who made these men the way they are,
The deranged men we see?

You don't realize that it starts at home,
When you make a lewd comment on the by,
Your little son can hear your voice,
And does the same to us.

You don't realize, that while they are to blame,
Some of it is on us,
After all we are the ones who teach and are taught,
And this fault is on us.

So when this Woman gets justice,
I doubt it will be in this lifetime,
Because the society we live in will shun,
That Woman who had no blame for this.

The man will walk free forever,
And the problem is that they know this,
They know that nothing will be done to them,
And so they'll do it again and again.

So I plead to you today, my friends,
To try to make a change here,
Please when you meet someone like this,
Don't try to make it better.

"Making it better" will probably entail,
Either pity or anger,
But at the end of the day this is not what She wants,
Its just to feel safe and protected.

She wants to walk the streets again,
Without the whistles and the comments,
She want to go out at night,
And not be scared of the strangers.

The Shadows

The Shadows looms so large today,

Over the little town,

Where little children laugh and play,

And adults can love and love.

The Shadows came to town today,

And a gory blood bath ensued,

Children cried tears of fear,

While everyone watched in horror.

Tears of blood were shed today,

In little Sandy Hook,

A scary man had come today,

With a shiny, scary tool.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

So the music went,

Sounds like cacophony left behind,

By the ones who serve the Shadows.

The children fell like a card castle,

That people try to build,

The red and black oozing out,

Regardless of the protective Queen.

The Queen, she fell for love today,

In protecting her beloved tykes,

She was beautiful and very brave,

And most importantly, so was her heart.

The Shadows came to town today,

And left behind a shattered heart,

The blood will stain the soils forever,

And the echoes prick our hearts.

[In honour of the children and the adults who lost their lives because of the Connecticut Shootout on 15.12.2012, and the families dealing with the repercussions of it. We are with you.]