Poverty In The World

Poverty In The World

( by Pragya Kumar )

A shrill scream of a child being born summed, the intolerable pain of a mother, halted the nervous tapping of a father who stood outside listening and brought a sigh of relief to the doula. A scream of hopes, a scream of happiness and a scream of a new journey. A scream unknown to the chaos of life, a scream totally unacquainted the norms of society. Holding the boy in his arms for the first time the father never knew that his cocoon of happiness would try out to be myth. Now it's been ten year since a boy who was born as an epitome of a family's happiness is shredded into feeble bones. His melanin of dermal has unrecognized coats. A malnourished soul. A family of five who has nothing to feed on. His identity has no meaning and his existence yields nothing. This ambiguity makes one question "what is exactly wrong?" It is the treatment that life has given them . 

It is the acquaintance of marsh that life throws them into. It is the evil of POVERTY that binds their beads of happiness. Eli Khamarov says," Poverty is like a punishment for a crime you didn't commit". This quote sums up the whole masterpiece but at the same time it makes me question my identity and my existence and on top of it the existence of God. 

I believe humanity has surrendered to the situation and adapted to the thought that during the course of life God makes rich people richer and poor people even more poorer. Poverty is never biased anymore. It strikes everyone with the same intensity and with the same enthusiasm. It never bifurcates among its disciples. Nearly half of the world population is ruled by poverty, and as we talk even more people are being added to the queue. Food is the mother of all necessity. Over 805 million people have no food to eat. They say that, "there are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread." I hereby take this opportunity to call upon that God, where are you now when half of the world is yielding for the bread". Nature has answers to everything. I partially agree to this thought, though seventy percent of earth is overflowing with water yet there more than 705 million people lack access to water. These 705 million pairs of desperate eyes glances the sky not for the clouds but for water. 

Michael Jackson connected the chord stating, "Heal the world, make it a better place". A billion of us swayed to the music without understanding the actual thought behind it. Food and water are those pursuits of life that make us alive. People who have money in their hand, can never understand the utmost scarcity of it. The reports of 2011 struck us with chronic rates of malnutrition. And the most heartbreaking news was the people that came under this scenario were children of the age of five years. 

Chinua Achebe through his poem ,"REFUGEE MOTHER AND CHILD" brought about the vivid truth of life during turbulent times. The poem hits you hard when you see a mother's irrevocable love towards his child who is laden with incurable diseases. Deep down in her heart she knows that her son would die but the everlasting hope in her heart is a tear-jerker. In spite of the diseases that canopies the world at any point of time, more than 21.8 million people are deprived of the vaccines against them. 

J.K Rowling was applauded when she said," happiness can be found even in the darkest of times if one only remembers to turn on the lights" I wonder how this quote will ever inspire these people who are fighting a lost battle. Some people are lucky in their life to be bestowed by all kinds of pleasure but sitting on the top of the world never forgets to look down to those people who are boiling in the fire of poverty. 

In today's world of social media the poor have only become a meme material. They only get the eye and sympathy of the viewer but nothing beyond that. Now that we have resides at our places during this pandemic, but we never know that this lockdown is no less a curse to them. Deprived of all the sanitation and medication, they are still standing tall against it. This proves that they are the true worriers. It is not me and you but them who stood in the realms of danger came out conquering it.

Disclaimer:-

The opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Light de Literacy and LDL does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.