‘Chai pe charcha’

Diversity in India is complicated. We, as Indians, have been using it as an USP for ages but I’m not sure of how far we have succeeded to understand its underlying complexity in our nation. From skin color to accents, from the thickness of the eyes to different weathers in the same month, nothing remains consistent for more than 100 kms in our country.

One thing that does remain consistent is the dynamic between the rich and the poor. It isn’t a news when I say the difference in their paths, lifestyle, needs, dreams are too disparate to even compare.
Please note when I say rich and poor further in the post, I’m referring to the two extremes. The one who likes to own gold tea cup sets and ones who might not know how many cups do they sell in a set.

Thankfully and gratefully, I’m neither of the above mentioned. But I’m sure you have seen people like me, some of you might even be in my category. You know, the ones who balance the healthy amount of jealousy for the rich, enough to thrust their ambitions and a significant clarity of the day-to-day efforts of the poor, accounting for some humility. Yeah you know, the Indian middle class. The middle class section of India holds large subsets within itself, by the way, but we are not here to discuss that.

Over the years, I realized that neither the poor nor the rich are wrong in their thinking, and the way they see each other. They are just a product of how our country’s economy and politics function and their to-be children would be the product of fate.

How can the ones who reside on one of side of the railway track in Dharavi not repel the ones sitting in their air conditioning multi story bungalows with a view of the vastness of the sea. But does that make rich bad? They didn’t build those bungalows in a day, did they? They are also coming from somewhere, some might be the product of their established parents but some might have climbed each stair, dropped buckets of sweats and still be spending sleepless nights thinking about what they want to achieve next.
The applause for their success is still feeble than the sound of the anger coming from the other side.

But the anger is real. It’s comprehensible. The rich in our country, however small the section of society they occupy, still remind the poor what they lack, what they could have, what they dream of. As much as charity and philanthropy help the ones in need, the acts still hardly manage to gain the respect they deserve.

Between this hatred and sympathy see-saw, where do we lie?

Jean Dreze’s words in his book ‘Sense and Solidarity’ seemed like well articulated reflection of my own thoughts – “We can not prove that the privileged owe something to the rest, any more than we can prove that theft is wrong. But both can be thought of as sensible principles of a good society”. What I’m trying to say is, that even after 70 years of independence, where freedom is sprinkled over the nation quite unevenly, we need to choose our battles wisely. Sometimes, correction – most of the times we might need to choose the battles on behalf of others.

When an urban girl uses ‘my life, my choice’ in a context of wearing the clothes she wants and a demand for night life, and all that what ‘Four more shots’ weakly tried to teach us about feminism, I don’t think, a fourteen year old girl in Rajasthan, at the same moment, would mind wearing a sari all her life only if her childhood was spared and she was given the right to her education.

When someone might get cranky at his house staff for not giving the keto-diet on time, an infant might be dying in his mother’s arms because he could not have the privilege to be born in a family who could provide him with enough nutrition to survive, and learn about night and day.

I don’t disagree with those who are fighting for something extra while standing on a ground that the other one is trying to reach. I too am the one who, after owning the comfort, craves for luxury. But maybe from next time, we can try to understand the difference between these two words, not just in their literal sense but what they mean when it comes to our nation, our citizens.
The water that we find too hard to use for washing our hair, someone’s eyes shine when he gets to drink it.
The jute bags of packages that we throw in garbage, someone uses it to sleep on, during the night.

These differences can’t be eliminated overnight. Yes, could have happened in 70 years but for some (explainable) reasons, did not. If not go beyond measures in actions, we can at least play our part in educating self. We can try more to understand why it is, what it is, and what all happened over the years that created a void this big beyond anyone’s ability to measure. We still might not get all the answers but I hope we’ll be able to analyse the situations more empathetically, more statistically, with a bit less biased view.