Slummatters

A friend asked me for my opinion/feelings about Slums, and I was surprised to know that I did have a collection of easily recall-able images and a surface recollection led to this.

Passing through a scenario of despair every single day would certainly have made me immune and indifferent to it, at least thats what I expected.
Even a thing of beauty becomes commonplace after a while, but somehow a thing that is so filled with reasons for anger or pain doesn't create apathy.

Finer details come to the surface.
There are men who come across as wastrels or louts but suddenly some faces seem less drunk and more like honourable men who are ready to take risks and work harder than any of their little better to do counterparts.
Children who seemed half dressed and starved suddenly seem more mature, more at home with the aspect of hunger and poverty, more patient that makes their innocence even more precocious.
The women who sustain for their families their entire lifespans, instead of being seeped into bitterness smile in flashes, smiles that speak of servitude and in spite of that a deeply rooted faith that there will be better days ahead, never mind that it is the next generation.

The place itself has a living throbbing quality to it, that is unmatched by even the most busiest roads and neither by those parties with the highest noise levels, the kinds that go on to the wee hours of the night without a wink.

The streets might be littered, and might not be streets at all but the locally available stone or cement slab that was just put together, a street worn down to more pebble than mud and tar or might just be plain, tarnished earth, but still have enough light to guide you gently.

Stolen electric lines, criss crossing to form a canopy that will beat the trellises we design, naked, dangling bulbs that are light every fifty or more paces provide better lighting than the main roads.

In a place filled mostly with despair and unbridled examples of life lived on leftovers, the doors are left wide open, not because they have nothing to lose, but because they are more willing to welcome life and the problems it brings, and more than anything else, because they know how to share.

Time, water, food, money, emotions, you name it and they will teach you how to give and how not to fear taking.
And not just with other people, but also with animals and all other forms of life.
Dogs do not go looking for garbage and are friendlier than the ones we feed Pedigree.
Birds do not need cages, but come back here because they are sure to be fed and not shooed away.
Plants are watered the day they have some, but somehow they sustain long enough till it comes.

The examples are endless and instances are many.

However, the most important facet that strikes me about slums, is how confident they are in the face of the worst forms of adversity.

Caste/religion, sex and money, the three most important ruling forces in a country like ours, those that seal the fate on every person, leave these people unperturbed.

Come calamity, caste disparity or be it a case of superiority, the inhabitants of these slums, are if not cool, collected, in terms of their wits and in terms of choosing their people too.

I agree, not all is glory but the fact that even if they do not overcome a problem, they have learnt to fight it, keep it at bay and if nothing else works, stick together and learn to live alongside it, this grit is what keeps them ticking.

A united front and the live and let live policy, something the rest of the society can certainly use, what say?