Hungry Kya?

I can never forget that silly, little, preposterous rhyme I was told, when I was a kid, “mummy, mummy bhook lagi, khaaley beta moongfali, moongfali mein dana nahin …” (Mother, I am hungry, have a groundnut..ok it sounds worse when translated. I might as well leave it. )

Wondering or laughing at the handling of an issue as pertinent as hunger, by a comparison with the silly couplet? This couplet perhaps, sums up the entire way of life for many of us. Firstly, it shows, the readiness with which we accept our problems. Our innate quality of accepting things as they are, as ‘written’, as ordained.

I am taking a big risk by pitting this couplet against such an issue. This might seem a misnomer and might be cynical to put a mere children rhyme to such stature. But this is the irony, I don’t know how many of our people even manage that moongfali– groundnut. They are surviving on peanuts, literally. At, times the mothers can’t even tell them to have it because, we haven’t left even that much for them.

It is not our ‘constitutional’ duty to provide them with food. Agreed. It is not our responsibility to earn their two square meals for them. Agreed. But it is our duty as a human being, as a citizen, to act discreetly when we make our own choices. A middle way, which will not affect us, at all, might make a big difference to them.

Hunger

Blocked, trapped, caged
a soul.
Strangled to death-
another dream.
A thought, a desire
inside the heart.
Stranded again-
another wish.

The leftovers of
a nourished self.
Gathers dust-
another life.
The lantern of hope
flickers away.
Washed away-
another spring.

The cries of
a craving child.
Indifference slained-
another soul.