Hard facts

The last article was a bit depressing. That was but natural; the theme was rather weird. No one would like to believe that our life is that bad. Well there are different phases and faces to life, like we all know. Some of them are quite dumb even if we cleverly conceal them behind the fine drapery of silky substance that we weave out of our mind. But there are stark realities too. Even in the background of shattering woes we go on building our personal nest of contentment and partial revelations.

That is what we normally do. But there is a substratum to life which is not all that enriching to know. That might shock some who are not familiar with them. The presence of such elements in our midst goes un-noticed by people who do not have to involve directly with them in their life. The middle class is mostly shielded from them and is often jolted when it accidentally comes into contact with them. I believe that the middle class is lucky in that sense. They are the creators of culture; they propagate ideas and are always in the forefront of everything that is happening anywhere in the world. But mostly they live in protected environments. I am not saying that they do not have their troubles, they do and some of them are terrifying at that. But mostly they do not have to deal directly with physical realities in the sense some of the poor do. And they do not venture so high up in the air for the fear of tumbling down, and landing rough on the ground.

Yet there are truly devastating facts around them. I too belong to the middle class. In a poor country like ours, the disparity between the various economic classes are so clearly outlined that they are some times frightening to look at. Some would not believe the depths of poverty in which some of the poor live in this country, neglected by society and the government.

There is a scheme to “uplift” the aboriginal people of the land to the main stream of society. Billions of bucks have been spent on them and they are still remaining as poor as they were ever before, perhaps they are poorer than they were previously. Some of these innocents have been uprooted from their natural habitat and planted elsewhere. They were then ignored. Well no, I am not an advocate of the theory of returning to nature that would be tantamount to disregarding every thing we have now as a result of combined human effort. But these poor devils had lived out of what they dug out of the forest land till now. Now they do not have even that. The guys who brought them to the new place have conveniently left them there and seem to have forgotten all about them.

A senior level officer of the government wondered where the money went after it’s been distributed. In one such scheme, around one thousand tribal families were consistently “helped” over the last half century or so. He calculated that if the money was directly distributed to them all the families would have been millionaires by now. You can imagine the deception to which these humble beings are subjected too.

These are some of the hard facts which remain within, when one dares to take a look around, considered in the back ground of such incidents one’s boredom with life pales into insignificance.

But such juxtapositions do not really happen do they? We would not like to set such precedents if we can help it.

Well that is how life is!