In case you happen to be my friend on Facebook, do not go by the pictures I post sometimes from exotic locations — I am pretty much a lower middle-class Indian who struggles to make ends meet and who sees no end to that struggle. I am not alone: Indians are born to struggle. I mean, just look out of the window this very moment. You will easily find half-a-dozen stories of struggle unfolding on your street.
You will see the woman who just delivered milk at your doorstep so that you can have coffee: she started her morning at 3.30 a.m. and still has many more houses to cover. Once the sun has risen, she will transform into a maid or a cook or a shop attendant. All this so that she can send her daughter to a good school.
You will see your young neighbour walking down to catch the company bus: it is 6 a.m. now and he will be back only at eight in the evening. Despite all the education and the handsome salary, he is nothing but a prisoner at his workplace for most of the day — and most of his life. Okay, he holidays in style with his wife and child once a year and pictures are put on Facebook, but that’s about it. The remaining 358 days, his life is defined by words such as ‘target’, ‘deadline’, ‘appraisal’, ‘pressure’, ‘performance’, ‘promotion’. There is simply no room for the word ‘happiness’: even if there is, there is no time to be happy.
You will also see your elderly neighbour doddering down the street to buy groceries. He is 76 and his wife is 70. They are both retired professors and they live alone now: their son lives in Texas and daughter in New Jersey. They would visit America often when the grandkids were small — to babysit — but now those kids are grown up and so the grandparents remain in India. Watch the elderly gent carefully: he has reached the end of the street and now wants to cross the road, but is hesitating because the traffic is so intimidating. What a struggle, just to cross the road. He could be hit by a speeding car someday — and people do die in that fashion in our country every single day.
Now get off the window and back to the newspaper. You will see several real estate advertisements promising you plush homes. Looking at the models in those ads — a handsome man with a flat tummy playing the husband and a gorgeous woman playing the wife — you would believe that India is getting posh. You will also come across news items about the country’s economy — how things are looking up — and about the various projects and schemes being rolled out by the Government.
I have long stopped reading such news because those projects and schemes don’t seem to include me. My life remains what it was, say, 15 years ago, in spite of the 15 budgets being presented and the Government changing in-between. Nothing has changed really — whatever change I see and feel has been driven by technology. Today, I can shop and book tickets sitting at home; back then, I couldn’t. That’s the only difference. Otherwise, I continue to remain a lower middle-class Indian, who still finds it a challenge to cross the road, and increasingly challenging to walk on the road.
