I was working on a humorous one about the North Korean rocket failure and Kim Jon-un’s speech, but an hour back I met a boy of 20 or so who had not eaten for 2 days and it broke my heart.
Not many would know that the first President of India, Rajendra Prasad, after demitting his office as the President of India, lived in a campus hostel in the Bihar Vidyapeet (or University) till his death - he did not even have a room of his own.
A far say from the current President of India, Pratibha Patil who is getting a posh bungalow constructed for her life after retirement. To me it sounds purely like a land grab.
In contrast, I had never thought I would be forced to write a good thing about Communists, but the Tamil Communist leader N. Varadarajan has forced me to write one. The good man, N. Varadarajan passed away last Tuesday, and the most interesting news is that he did not own even a house - anywhere. In fact, he is survived by 2 sons, for whom he did not bother to secure a government job, position or contract.
After 69 years in politics and having served as a Member of TN Legislative Assembly 3 times, it is a great measure of the man that he didn’t even own a small flat - when even police bodyguards of the erstwhile CM M. Karunanidhi have managed to secure lucrative government apartments for themselves. Even worse was a report in a Tamil daily that the former CM defended it as rightly done.
I wonder how the former CM felt when he went to pay his respects to the body of N. Varadarajan, in light of such assertions.
But the two incidents did not elicit anything except derision in me - we are all immune to the shenanigans of the politicians and their greedy ways by now.
What broke my heart was as I went to buy some fags for my after dinner smokes, I chanced upon a boy of 20 or so from Bihar who was lying on a newspaper in front of my apartment. Enquiry revealed that he had been left back by an unscrupulous driver of the lorry on which the boy was engaged as a cleaner, from Bihar.
The boy claimed to not have eaten since day-before and at first me and my neighbours were trying to send him away from the neighbourhood, fearing untoward incidents. I mean, he was no John Rambo and we certainly were not the sheriff, but who wants to take a risk?
The boy didn’t listen to us and hunkered down on the sidewalk of the apartment complex in front of my own. I sat down for dinner but found it difficult to contemplate having it while the boy was hungry out in front.
At about the same time the Chief Minister of the boy’s state Bihar, Nitish Kumar was attending the centenary of establishment of the state of Bihar in far away Mumbai. I am sure neither he or the invitees went hungry that night.
But a boy from his state hadn’t had food for 2 days and whatever the CM of his state felt good about, I didn’t. I shovelled the remaining half of my rice, added some curd and some pickles on to a plantain leaf and took the impromptu serving to the boy, who gobbled it like he had never seen food before. Happy Bihar Diwas to him.
A photo was in the offing, but it felt crass and inhuman, even to me. But it did make me feel good enough to write this criticism of the land grabbing President Pratibha Patil and a celebrating Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
I am off to finish my delayed dinner and feel if Mahakavi Subramanya Bharathi who wrote that ‘we will destroy the world if a single man goes hungry’ was alive today, he would have been weeping blood.
God help us!
Not many would know that the first President of India, Rajendra Prasad, after demitting his office as the President of India, lived in a campus hostel in the Bihar Vidyapeet (or University) till his death - he did not even have a room of his own.
A far say from the current President of India, Pratibha Patil who is getting a posh bungalow constructed for her life after retirement. To me it sounds purely like a land grab.
In contrast, I had never thought I would be forced to write a good thing about Communists, but the Tamil Communist leader N. Varadarajan has forced me to write one. The good man, N. Varadarajan passed away last Tuesday, and the most interesting news is that he did not own even a house - anywhere. In fact, he is survived by 2 sons, for whom he did not bother to secure a government job, position or contract.
After 69 years in politics and having served as a Member of TN Legislative Assembly 3 times, it is a great measure of the man that he didn’t even own a small flat - when even police bodyguards of the erstwhile CM M. Karunanidhi have managed to secure lucrative government apartments for themselves. Even worse was a report in a Tamil daily that the former CM defended it as rightly done.
I wonder how the former CM felt when he went to pay his respects to the body of N. Varadarajan, in light of such assertions.
But the two incidents did not elicit anything except derision in me - we are all immune to the shenanigans of the politicians and their greedy ways by now.
What broke my heart was as I went to buy some fags for my after dinner smokes, I chanced upon a boy of 20 or so from Bihar who was lying on a newspaper in front of my apartment. Enquiry revealed that he had been left back by an unscrupulous driver of the lorry on which the boy was engaged as a cleaner, from Bihar.
The boy claimed to not have eaten since day-before and at first me and my neighbours were trying to send him away from the neighbourhood, fearing untoward incidents. I mean, he was no John Rambo and we certainly were not the sheriff, but who wants to take a risk?
The boy didn’t listen to us and hunkered down on the sidewalk of the apartment complex in front of my own. I sat down for dinner but found it difficult to contemplate having it while the boy was hungry out in front.
At about the same time the Chief Minister of the boy’s state Bihar, Nitish Kumar was attending the centenary of establishment of the state of Bihar in far away Mumbai. I am sure neither he or the invitees went hungry that night.
But a boy from his state hadn’t had food for 2 days and whatever the CM of his state felt good about, I didn’t. I shovelled the remaining half of my rice, added some curd and some pickles on to a plantain leaf and took the impromptu serving to the boy, who gobbled it like he had never seen food before. Happy Bihar Diwas to him.
A photo was in the offing, but it felt crass and inhuman, even to me. But it did make me feel good enough to write this criticism of the land grabbing President Pratibha Patil and a celebrating Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
I am off to finish my delayed dinner and feel if Mahakavi Subramanya Bharathi who wrote that ‘we will destroy the world if a single man goes hungry’ was alive today, he would have been weeping blood.
God help us!
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