A victim of circumstances or a victim of apathy???*

It is perhaps every teenagers dream to holiday in bali and shop in dubai. It is perhaps every software engineer's routine to party in places where a glass of vodka costs more than three meals for an entire family. It is perhaps every 17 year old boy's hobby to go to a shopping mall, look at beautifull women and thank God for making life so much more worthwhile. It is perhaps quite okay for a father to buy his son a Mitsubushi Pajero for passing 10th grade, while on the other hand money is being saved by cutting down on the salary of the housemaid. But while we are engrossed in our most serious ventures, we should perhaps step out of our own shoes and see those things that we ought to see, to hear those things that we ought to hear, to stay silent and think about what we really have to speak about.
I am writing here fully aware of the cruel ironies and sorrowfull contradictions in the world today. We live in a society that plays on a see saw not caring enough to see if the person on the other end is heavy enough to balance the apparatus. We live in a not so condusive atomosphere where luxuries are no longer enough but instead an ambition to go beyond is visible. Yet on the other lie people who are troubled by the voice within, who cry and scream on the inside watching a poor soul's hope lies on the edge of a cliff and yet cant do anything to help.
Death represents to most of us that evil force that will take us away from everything and everyone we love and cherish while for her it is perhaps a source of liberation, freedom from responsibilities that burden her back and strike her down, end of a punishment called life
While we fight our battles against boredom, against mediocrity and against simplicity as opposed to vulgar extravagance, she fights a battle for food and shelter she fights a drunken husband and for good education which her children rightly deserve. While a kitchen knife to us, represents all those times we have hurt ourselves trying to chop vegetables, it reminds her of the day she came to her employers home shocked and not knowing where to go with the knife thrust into her back, by the very person who was supposed to love and protect her.
While a good convent school represents to us affordable means of good education and money worth spending on, for her it represents an agent of financial burden and yet at the same time the right place for her brilliant daughter. It represents a situation where it is less food today and more money tomorrow or enough food today and a hopeless future tomorrow.It is true that she and I are from different sides of society. Yet her greatness and resilience is beyond anything I have ever seen.
I stand here with the hope that her honesty is not rewarded with misery and sorrow; that her sincerity is not returned with starvation; that her nobility and integrity doesnt bring a drunken mad man whose only motivation is alchohol.
Yet I also realise that hope isnt enough and neither is Rs.4000/- as fees for 10th grade. Gratitude has lost is meaning and concern signifies guilt and frustration. I stand here at the face of a society that is over eating and obese and yet refuses to share, at a government that continuously fights over our language and yet doesnt listen to the people who speak that language.
I am also aware that words are not enough. Heck they may even discredit me as the person who only speaks and doesnt actually do anything. Yet it is with the hope that someone will listen and someone will listen good that I am here. I am here not telling a story about a individual but about a host of maids in Bangalore who fight drunken husbands, increasing costs of education and narrow minded employers and the apathy of society. This is the story of a housemaid whose drunken husband is absconding at the time of paying fees for the daughter’s term at school. This is the story of the housemaid whose drunker husband has drained her of all the money she needs for a cataract operation. This is the story of those millions of people who clean the houses of people they don’t know, ensure the family’s good health by tidying up the place and are yet ill treated as outcastes and cheap labour.
I stand here lost in a different way thinking and pondering and still not able to understand anything. I would prefer my intellect to stay idle than to live with the frustration that I wasnt able to figure out another way, my eyes would rather prefer to be blind than see a soul lose its hope near the cliff and still not be able to do anything, my ears would prefer to be deaf than listen to the cries of those who need help and still feel helpless, my mouth would rather prefer to be dumb than say things and not be able to do anything promised. Justice and equity seem more like concepts on paper than operative words in today's world. They say that God is like a lawyer, i.e both are approached only when people can’t think of a way out and I would say I am also such a stereotype.
To all those teenagers who own pajeros for passing 10th grade, who party at “The Capitol” spending more on booze than people could afford on proper food, I would like to say that a world exists parallel to ours and it is suffocating and it cries for help. It struggles to keep its residents alive and begs for someone to intervene. If you are a person to whom things beyond luxuries are a necessity, for whom comforts are more of a right than a privilege and for whom drugs and cigarettes are worth buying, then it is only fair that I wish you the best of luck.
But as V puts it in his speech in V for Vendetta, if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel and if you seek as I seek, then please post this article on your blogs and spread this to every blogger you know for more the speakers, more will be listeners.

*This is written by Ash: http://ashinbangalore.blogspot.com/2007/05/victim-of-circumstances-or-victim-of.html