The jinx of lower class

I go for a walk in their colonies and parks. I see them cleaning the drains, picking junk from the garbage dump, fighting over petty matters, making a 'joint' of ganja (drugs), playing gilli-danda. Everything about them reeks of their common 'low class' characteristics - the expressions in their eyes, their multi-coloured clothes, their dingy houses, the kind of songs they listen to, the films or TV channels they watch, the filthy alcohol they gulp down their throats, the cheap cigarettes they smoke, their actions. I wonder if it has left any void of individuality even in their minds. Or do they think of the same things, that too in the same way. At least, they seem to talk very much the same. So, you never know. There is nothing unpredictable about them. Nothing that is just that person's, and doesn't give out his low-class status.

I look at those kids - the only remnants of some dynamic life and uniqueness, which is constantly fading . I think where are they headed to. I feel sorry for them - the high conhesive force would let them go nowhere. They would keep rotting in these slums. I wish I could shout it out to them. They sit in their fathers' teashops, they go to those schools which fail to make them see dreams, their potential, the benefit of education, they would drop out after a few years, and then continue with making tea or at the most, find some rickety job, unless something happens.

But what could possibly happen? Their eating places, cinemas, schools, parks - everything is different from those of the middle class or high class people. It's like a small, non-polygonal closed world in which they keep loitering. They are jinxed.  The outside is virtually blocked to them, and on the inside, there are only rooster coops binding them. Where could the inspiration come from? This sad realization dawns on me, and sadder than that is the fact that they are not in a position to even realize or understand it.

Books seem to be the only solution. A gateway to the world outside. A door which, sitting in their room, could let them foray into an arena of thoughts reaching outside their drudged life, enable the formation of individual, unique thoughts, opinions and dreams. Rumi said, "Give a child a beautiful poem to read, and he would never be a slave." But they would spend money on anything but novels and poetry books, to which they have had no exposure since ages and which would seem to them to be something futile. Thinking of either distributing books among them, or to form some kind of reading club.