The Shelter Less of the State – A Very Short Story!
Photo credit: ronnieb from morguefile.com
They are the shelter less of the state. Right over there, you see that old structure, which at first may look like the place where they can stay, where they can take shelter but sadly, it can only accommodate and safeguard few of their valuables. Valuable is a wrong word to use in their context. I should have been clearer.
Few official papers which the government regularly issues on their names. Those documents are all they will have all their lives. Although they know it quite well those papers are of no use to them or no gain is going to come their way through them but they must still have them and that is called living with some hope. They spread their tattered clothes around the jogger’s park along the canal and lie there whole day during summers.
The breeze from the canal gives them some relief. And throughout the season they complaint about chest infections and a number of them are diagnosed with tuberculosis. Thanks to the free check-ups they avail. There is a steep rise in the number of deaths among them in the winters and we’ve to take care of at least one body daily.
But it is the monsoon which is the toughest. When it rains, and it rains heavily in this part of our country, the canal is in flood and they have to move to the bridge over there, which luckily for them has a roof. They sit there all day looking at the dark grey water in the canal, at the plastic bags swirling in the waves and the traffic on the road. It’s a cris-crossed view from the bridge due to the railings and that is exactly what their life is, cris-crossed mess of tragedies.
Although finding their living conditions appalling when I was appointed here, the amount of alcohol and tobacco they consumed daily surprised me. You know how it is! Look at that group of men over there near the dust bins. You can see them huddled there anytime you want to look in that direction and find them there always smoking and sometimes laughing out loud giving a false impression of normality. It’s amazing to understand the importance of alcohol or smoking in their lives.
Sometimes you get a feeling it is more important than bread. A perfect day for them; not two fulfilling meals but few loaves of bread in the afternoon, any possible number of cheap cigarettes throughout the day and alcohol just before they go to bed so that they can sleep late into the next day. Seeing all this, you start questioning their source of income.
They make money, whatever little they make, from doing odd jobs here and there but it won’t take you much time and thought to realize that the chief source of their income is prostitution. There, no, there, those girls chatting beyond the groove of trees. Yes! Once sun sets they will be sent to the labour slums across the highway. There, they are migratory labourers from other states. Though they too don’t make much money but enough to pay these girls for their services.
Every newly appointed officer like me, trust me every one, tries to take some immediate steps to curb this wretched trend but it’s not late before the realization dawn upon him that, it is no solution to the problem. No solution for us; but what these people do is the only solution they have for the problems they face every day; problems of hunger, of identity and of survival.
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