Poverty

There are times in your life when you hear a simple word from someone, and that simple word simply changes your way of thinking about something. It is not necessary that the speaker himself knows about the great effect of his word on you. Even sometimes if you explain about it, he'll look at you with a confused look. The confused look in the eyes of a person who've just said the wisest thing in the world (at that time and for you), the master key to your main problem, is so painful that I don't dare to talk about it in those situations. After all, how does it matter that the wisest thing (at a certain time and for me) makes any sense for another person?

I remember my first school holidays. It was the summer after I'd finished my first grade at school. My mother was badly sick, and we all had moved to my grandparents' home. There I used to hide in the cool basement where I could hide and enjoy being alone. The basement was full of strange things...

I was very much happy that I could read. I used to take the first book I could read by myself to the basement, and read, and read, and read...

The book was written by a teacher, who had worked in some villages. He had witnessed poverty of those villagers. He had felt it bones to bones. His writings were stories of those people, for children. He was considered to be a leftee comrade. His name was "Samad". His books were banned in those days, and I have no idea how my aunt could find it and persuade me to read it.

Those stories made me cry. I didn't like their miserable situations, and I couldn't do anything. Even I didn't know what I should do. Above all, I was suffering from their feelings. People in Samad's books hated me. Because I was not hungry. Because I was wearing a beautiful dress (forget it that my mother had made it for me and it was not expensive, it was beautiful). Because I had shoes, even more than one pair. Because I was not shivering in winter. Because I have never died out of hunger or cold. Because I existed.

I read books by another author, Ali Ashraf Darvishian. His books showed me that poor boys hate me because I may not like them. I was suffering... It was too painful that these people had to take those situations. But above all I was suffering that they hated me.

I remember I felt sinful when I wore new jeans, new shoes. I felt sinful, exactly the way our principal at school had taught me. She had taught me that I was sinful and god should help me. She taught us that we are drawning in our sins and we are shelterless.

I felt sinful, I grew up sinful...

As I grew old, I could get rid of some of the sinful feelings my principal had taught me, but not from the ones these faithful comrades had.

What confessions, I never wore a perfect dress. I always left some part ugly. I didn't want to have the perfect look, as if I want to show it to the people who hate me and shout: see, this is the point for you.

I had learnt I should feel sympathy with them, also I had learnt indirectly to degrade them. I was degrading them, because I had the presumption that they are miserables who hate me.

This was the way I thought.

Few months back I went to a slump area, to my maid's home.

Slump area, narrow bending pathways. Open doors of small common rooms. Smell of cooking, sounds of arguing, laughing, talking, kitchen vessels, pouring water... Sounds of living. But somehow more in density.

A room. A small room painted in blue. With a bed at one side, a cupboard in front of it, and a shelf and water pipe at the corner: the kitchen. That was all. Shabby steel glasses and plates were put very carefully on the shelf, reflecting the light of the only lamp in the room. Everything was in place.

She asked me to sit on the bed. She knew I drink black tea, so she offered me black tea instead of common white tea. Although the way she'd prepared it was wrong and it tasted like hell, yet it was joyful. It was made of affection, humanity. She was too pride to offer me the same sweet I had given her as a gift. She sent Aishwini, her sweet daughter to buy some biscuits. I took a lot of them. Each bite tasted like love.

I noticed that they don't hate me... They don't hate me.

But still I considered them as miserables.

I told the whole story to her, to my friend. She felt the signature of my degrading feeling towards them. She asked THE question:

"Where they unhappy?"

I replied yes. Like most of the times when we reply without refreshing our minds.

Just then I thought: Were they really unhappy or was it me, who saw them unhappy. Wasn't it my own unhappiness? Have I seen THEIR unhappiness or the reflection of my OWN unhappiness?

I replayed the sounds in my mind. Laughter, living, it was vivid...
I remembered how Aishwini hugged the neighbor's daughter and told me she is her sister. I remembered the looks on people's eyes. They were not unhappy. They were strong, they were united, they were happy. They were alive.