Its too cold out there tonight, in fact
freezing. I didn't realize this sharp drop in
temperature until I hit the roads for a 5 min walk for my dinner to
my regular spot, at around 10. People wearing tight jackets, hands stuffed in
their trouser pockets, muffler or any piece of cloth tightly wound around their
ears. The all too familiar sight of winter around.. Its showing
9 degrees in Weather info section of my mobile. It's not that such
chillness here in Pune was not expected at this time of the year, in fact
according to the newspapers it had touched record lows here in the last 3
decades just a few days back. But it was also not expected that
it's occurrences would be as erratic as it has been so far. Only 2
days back I felt quite normal at night to face the not so chilly wind in my
Activa when i realized that I had forgotten to wear my jacket. Tonight it would
have made me freeze in the middle of the road.. While it's unbearably cold
outside now on the streets, its pleasingly comfortable here in my room with my
windows closed. My instincts tell me to pick up that cozy (but not so thick)
blanket, wrap it around myself tightly and go off to sleep or listen to some songs
in my headphone and sleep off unknowingly beneath its warmth. But i had
resolved myself a couple of hrs before that I won't go to sleep tonight before
i put my thoughts onto
a blog post.
Too many of them have been hovering in my
mind for too long. Just random, slightly absurd, a bit logical, a trifle
provoking, somewhat introspective, even painfully sad.. just about every kind
of thoughts have been idling in this mind in my spare time. I have to say I had
very little spare time to allow my mind to contemplate so much. But its my mind
afterall! one which i have failed to rein in as per my own wish for a long long
time. Those long resolutions to sit down for a quiet meditation for
atleast 5 mins for a start has fallen into my deaf ears and brain time and
again. Before i let myself get carried away again into my wayward thoughts I
better focus on what I had initially in my mind for this post to be about -
HOME. Needless to say, for the past couple of months that's have been the most
important thing in my list.
In somewhere
around late August or early September, I don't quite remember precisely,
torrential rains lashed the city that single day. It was one of those days when
you didn't bother to carry your umbrella coz it didn't rain for the
past few days, and you got tired of loading it in your bag, expecting the rain
gods to sleep another day as usual. But the gods chose that very day to wake up
and punish you for your non-persistence and rained at you with full
ferocity. It neither seemed to stop nor even slowing down its pace in the
evening when it was time to leave for home from office.I stupidly went to have
a Wada pav in a stall just 10-15 meters away from my office and came back fully
drenched. Thankfully I wore a t-shirt inside that still was comfortably dry. My
friend staying nearby just 1 min walk from there urged me stay at his flat for
that night. I had almost resigned myself to accept his invitation and come back
the next day in that t-shirt of mine which was more suited for a weekend party
than for attending a meeting in office, forget about giving presentations. But
more than worrying about my attire, I sensed that I was getting restless about
something, to return home. No it was not my actual home where i have the
company of my parents, it was just a flat which i shared with another friend of
mine along with some basic necessities occupying it. Still i felt a strong urge
like never before to return to my flat, come what may.
And then it struck
me. I could feel what a home means for millions of homeless people we hardly
care about sitting in the comfort of our own furnished house. More
than bearing a hungry stomach, which he might have got habituated to some
extent in due course of time, it must have been much more agonizing for that
beggar on the street to face a heavy rain under some rickety shade for
a seemingly unending night. I see women cooking in the shade of a
makeshift home under a flyover while their naked children crawl around in the
dirt, men lying on the footpaths and stations under a torn filthy shawl, and
countless of them who posses almost nothing. All of them have one thing in
common, they don't have a HOME, a shelter to atleast sleep peacefully. In my
idle time I must be thanking my stars every second, that I have been born with
no worries about this one of the 3 basic necessities of man alongside food and
clothing. Although a time did come in this past few weeks where i had to run
helter skelter to find a new flat, since I had to leave my present one because
of an extremely self-centered and selfish flatmate I have ever lived
with. I don't want to crib about him anymore; have given him far enough space
in my bitter thoughts than i should have, my blog will be blemished if i write
one more word about him. Anyway, I finally found a more than decent and
spacious flat for myself alone, although costlier but still quite affordable in
my current standard of living. But for those who survive unimaginably poor
conditions of living everyday this will feel like a heaven, for atleast 6
people!
A few days back on
28th of Dec it was quite cold as well when i had gone out to have my dinner at
a nearby place called Jagtap dairy. While I was about to start my vehicle while
returning, I saw something. Not a rare sight for any of us, but I couldn't stop
myself of taking this pic somehow without any purpose..
My conscience didn't allow me to give away
my Allen solly jacket to this fellow. I don't know even if i had made an
attempt to do it if he would have refused it, not wanting to make someone feel
him pitiable .Or even if I had made him accept it, there was no guarantee that
he would still be allowed to wear it next day, the dark side of this world is
not too kind as known to all. Nevertheless, I button-started my bike and left.
Have we ever
wondered or even bothered to imagine how it feels to die in a bone-chilling
shivering cold night. In tomorrow's newspapers, somewhere in the middle of it,
in a barely visible small space there would be a few lines about 23 more dying
in North India succumbing to the chill. Hardly a few of us will
ponder how those lives might have been saved with a mere thick blanket for each
one of them if not anything else. A government which can think about bringing
about a cash transfer scheme concerning 100s of districts and billions of
poverty stricken people in the country can't think of even distributing a
few hundred blankets for the really needy as a start?! Why does it require
an NGO, a spirited youth team or an ongoing NDTV initiative to help out these
homeless people? Just like it required a brutal gang rape of that luckless girl
to spark a much needed agitation that shook the so called ministers out of
their slumber, maybe it needs an equally unexpected incident of epic
proportions to raise an issue out of it. May be the Government doesn't find
it's vested interests to be fulfilled by helping out these people who don't
have a voter I-card to cast their ballot in it's favor. But it doesn't seem to
understand that even with those vested interests if it reaches out to this seemingly
uneducated, useless masses, it will generate much more goodwill and support on
its side in due course of time. What can be expected from this elected people's
representatives as we call them, who bother more about the security of the
former president than the common man.
As rightly said by
some forgotten old man, it's upon us to be the change what we want to see.
Spending 2 and half hrs on writing about it won't change anything, someone
might have just died out there right now as the cold gathers full steam at 2' o
clock in the night now. We have to gather ourselves up and do something about
it. Even donating a small sum of money or buying some little child a warm
sweater wont burn a big hole in our pockets. Perhaps we can get inspired from
the effort put by a handful of people in TCS Chennai during their
Christmas celebrations. They collected money from the everyone in the project
teams and went to a orphanage for mentally and physically challenged people.
They bought all their handmade articles and even gave away nearly a lakh Rupees
of collected money to the orphanage. I can only represent them in pictures in
my blog here and dedicate them to Aishwarya, the person closest to my heart
apart from my parents, who herself was directly involved with all these
activities..
