FOUND an announcement today, that the free rations for the poor were being extended for another five years. I knew without a doubt why the announcement was being made a little before the elections. But isn’t it time, we stopped dipping into the coffers of the government and started doing our bit of sharing individually. If we did, these election stunts would disappear, and voters would vote not just because of freebies each party offers.
We can start with the glamourous, and glittery rich folk display on Page Three. The money they spend one evening would feed a family a year. And yet with no guilt or conscience they display leg and body to the world at large and also to those who hungrily peek in at the hotel window and wish for one bite of their juicy steak or slice of Christmas pudding or Diwali dinner.
I’ll never forget Col. Tutton from England, a dear friend of mine. We met after several years when he decided to visit India again with Mrs Tutton. We decided to lunch together, and I took them to the Taj. “Bob,” he said, “I can’t eat here, when I know the same money could feed those urchins outside. Let’s eat elsewhere and with what we save, feed them.” We ate in a small though lovely restaurant and yes, many hungry went home with their stomachs filled.
A twelve-year-old, Christopher Daniel penned these lines in England, where he lives.
It was by chance that we were born, To plenty in a land of corn. In other lands less favoured by, The weather’s hand. It is a very bitter price they pay, For want of wheat and rice. It was sheer chance where we were born. Should we not send them of our corn?
I am sure you will all agree with the twelve-year-old poet? But before you do, agree to the government’s dole, the page 3 plea, and the corn from abroad, I’d like to run this little story by you: A speaker stood in Hyde Park and addressed an audience which was made of just one man. “If you had two houses you would give them to the poor, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” shouted his single listener. “And if you had two cars, you would keep one and give the other away?” “Indeed!” shouted his listener. “And if you had two shirts, would you give one away?” “Hey, wait a minute,” said the man who was listening, “I do have two shirts!” Yes, it’s easy speaking of others, but what can you and I do? Let’s decide today, to make poetry in the dreary prose of life..!
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