A tale of recalcitrant thoughts...

I will tell you a story.

A story about a child.
A story of survival, a story of helplessness.
A story of surrender.

The roots of this story lie in a downtrodden area of a prosperous metropolis of a rather developing nation; where the brand of perfume or waist length are not the primary concerns. The subject of our story was born to a very poor household, amongst the cries of his dozen hungry siblings being beaten by a drunk father. Though his little eyes were still closed, he could already feel the pain and suffering in his weakened mother's voice. He could feel her distress at not being able to feed him. He could feel his own hunger and weakness.
And then he could feel nothing.
He died.

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Another child in another city survived. Yes, he survived his death, but not his ill fortune. The same drunk father, the same weakened, but working, mother and half a dozen siblings to fight him for food. All life meant for him was scrouging food from those municipal wastes and watching those uniformed children of nice families with their bags and water bottles every morning. One day, he saw his father having a long animated chat with a person whom he had never seen before, after which his father came over to him and gave a pat on his shoulder. He had never seen him so happy, neither could he understand the reason for her mother crying the whole night. The next morning, the same man took him to a middle class family in the other end of the town, where his daily chores included washing dishes, clothes, sweeping and carrying out small errands for his masters. He watched daily as his mistress would read out to her children from their colourful books, which had many beautiful drawings of a puppet with a long nose and a beautiful lady with white wings. The paper was soft. He got beaten badly for touching the kids' bags and was accused of theft. They shut him in a dark room for two days without food. He cried alone in the dark. He cried for his mother.
But soon those two days passed and so did many years. He always missed his mother. Once he even ran away to search for her, but not knowing where to go and an empty stomach forced him to return back. And thus his days passed by, the hands who should have felt pen and paper washed dishes, the cheeks who were once kissed by his mother now bore the signs of his masters' anger.
A life entitled to love was now ordained to affliction.

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Different households have different tragedies.
This one had everything running perfect and nice.
A caring father's daily wage as an industrial laborer sufficed the needs of the family.
A hardworking man, he never let his children feel the void created by his wife's demise. But things have a tendency to go wrong just as you think they can't. An accident at the factory saw him losing his hands to a piece of machinery. Since he could work no more, the bread winning task of the family fell on the shoulders of his eldest son. He was offered his father's job according to the "company law"; but the place which took the hands of a full grown man was no playground for his 8-year son. Lack of money and inflexible compensation rules forced the father to send him to the nearby fireworks factory, a small establishment which used only children as workers to minimize wage and hassles.
He hated life there. Work hours extended from 7 in the morning to 2 in the night, with an occasional breath taker in between and meals. He hated the chemicals that he had to deal with. They made his skin dry and parched with a burning sensation. The air which was filled with sulfur made him choke at times. Most of his fellow workers had suffered the work's toll. Burnt skin and fingers were a common sight. He came to know of a boy who had his face badly scarred and his fingers mutilated in an accident, but still that boy worked there, making matchsticks and occasionally rolling crackers . Apparently the owner got a letter signed from his father that he suffered injuries while playing at home.
Everyday, the owner would yell at them and beat them. He would say that the nation ran due to them. They were the working force of the nation, their motherland. He would talk about affection and duty towards their motherland.

Affection?
Surely the word was alien to him now.

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These were three instances of the conditions some of the less fortunate children of our nation dwell in.
Someone is dead before having a chance to see this beautiful world, because his father was a drunkard and his mother was too weak to feed him. All the mention he gets in the world is in the infant death ratio charts.

Someone works as a domestic laborer, carrying out the whims of his "civilized" masters. No matter how nicely he serves them, obeys their orders; at puberty, he is kicked from the house to restrict the effect of his "ill company" on their growing children. With nowhere to go and nothing to eat, he has no chance but to steal. He is caught. They call him a thief. They spit at him.

Someone works days and nights at a meager salary at a constant risk of being blown to bits any second. He works barehanded with chemicals like potassium cyanide and magnesium stearate, which in some parts of the world, are handled by people wearing titanium suits, to create matches and fireworks; which are used for celebrations.
A moment of joy for someone is a lifelong ordeal for another.

These are but a few insights into what the present is, and what the future holds. A corpse, a thief , a mutilated body incapable of doing its daily chores????
But alas. All we do is write the story, read it, and move along. Hoping for their Saviour to come soon. This is our contribution to whatever fate they suffer.

The story ends here.
But neither do their pain and suffering, nor our indifference.
Before ending, I have a question for all of us. Given the three choices as in the story, which one would we like to take?

Well, the answer is obvious, and so is our apathy.

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The clock struck 7:52 on a cold January evening and a loser was born. Delighted parents, aunts, uncles swarmed him.

'He will be my pride', said the father. He had always wanted a boy. A boy in whom he saw himself. He was a deputy magistrate in the high court. But he had led a pretty harsh life. Coming from a farmer's family, it was hard for him to get to the position he was at. For months now, he had been thinking about his child. Planning about his future, his career, his life. He was determined to make him an engineer. Something he could never manage. This was a big day for him.

'I will never let any trouble cross his path', the mother was ecstatic. She had seen her husband planning all these months, and she could not have been less elated. She was a very religious and conservative woman. All these months she had been praying hard to get a boy. Because, according to her, boys were the only ones who brought laurels to the family. Growing up in a conservative family where the boys were the masters of the house had put this notion in her head. She envisioned her son to be the perfect gentleman she used to fancy in her adolescence.

'We will love him the most', said the rest. The rest of the relatives were curious, more than anything, to know about the child. The enigma that surrounds a childbirth, will he be fat or will he be thin, what colour his eyes will be of, will he inherit the serenity of the father or the looks of his mother, will he live up to the standard the family had set in the past, had driven most of them. And here they were, agog with curiosity, to be among the first ones to hold and appraise him.

And thus the hero of our story was born, with so many expectations already put over him. Little did he know that in the time to come, the burden of most of these will be too hard for him to carry. He was named.....well, lets call him Loser.

The starting years, to begin with, were fun for Loser. He was pampered and mollycoddled a lot. But the fun days were soon to be over. Soon, Loser would move over to bigger and "better" things. Primary schooling was no fun. Carrying a weight nearly equal to his own, he entered daily into a world which only taught him envy. This was a world of competition, a world of comparison, and a world of suppressed desires. He was the brightest in the class, yet the teachers didn't think very high of him. Because he used to question a lot. And the teachers didn't like him questioning. After all, which adult would like to cut a sorry figure in front of a toddler when he cant answer his questions, questions like why the bark is brown and the leaves are green, even though they are the part of the same tree? They were rather insistent upon him giving more attention to the parts of speech.
After the gruelling hours of the school, Loser would go over to his tuition classes, guitar lessons and marshal arts training. This was a part of 'A complete personality development Program'. But he wanted to dance. He liked dancing. But he wasn't allowed to. Dancing was a soft option for boys. His parents were more concerned about him getting an 'A' grade in the english test when the neighbour's kid got an 'A+'.

Most of Loser's Middle school was spent in a residential school. Far away from home, he was all alone. This school was supposed to be the top residential school for boys, but no school, howsoever well-infrastructured or well-maintained, can provide the warmth and assurance as home does. The hostel idea was his mother's. She wanted to incorporate in him the perfect manners and etiquettes she found lacking in the men around her. And though it was hard for her to let him go, she made sure that he attneded the best residential school in the country. But alas, our hero picked up nothing at the school but vices, for there was no one to tell him what was right, and what wasn't. Deteriorating health and academic conditions forced his parents to call him back.

Enter senior school and the world was totally different for our Loser. He experienced pressure as he had never done before. Relatives questioning about his career move and the parent pressure left him baffled. Everywhere around him, his friends were taking up one or the other stream which left him even more confused. His father was adamant on him doing engineering and so, he caved in, partly because it was one of the most difficult options available, and he wanted to prove that he wasn't a doomed investment. And thus our hero embarked upon his journey, a journey which would teach him to suppress his desires, and to act the way he never wanted to, a journey which would test the extremes of his patience. He reduced himself to a book-feasting worm whose greatest concerns included the likes of Demjanov's reaction and Tchebysheff's inequality. And amidst the changing hormonal conditions in his body and ample distractions, it was never easy. But he did it. Though not in a way he hoped for. But he got through the examination which takes the best minds into the best technical institutions of the country.

But Loser had a price to pay. He lost himself in the process. He did what his parents wished for, what his relatives dreamt of, what his friends prayed for; but he could never do what he was for. He could never be himself. Never ever he did something just because he wanted to. All his life he did things which others wanted of him, what others "expected" of him. He gave in to their pressure. He always had to be a model son, model brother, model nephew; but he could never prepare himself to be a model human. And he is also to blame for that. He never stood up to his own desires. Maybe he was acting along because he knew that they were his well wishers and he didn't want to break their heart. Instead he chose to break his own.

Winning is not all that important. Its savouring the win that matters. Sometimes, we don't do things that we want to do; there are times still when we do things we don't want to do. But worst are the times when our do's and dont's are influenced by ideas which are not our own. Loser lives in us.
He lives in me.

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