Right to FOOD!

I met these kids on the sidelines of tarmac while strolling along the lanes of Mumbai.( I was there last week) I immediately froze them into my camera without even a shard of shame cropping up inside my head even when I was ripping them of their privacy. Little did they know that they even possessed some of it like every other person does? The children took no notice of me as they were busy devouring something which did not have enough decorum to get into the realm of foods. I went closer to them to find a footing in their vicinity. The area inhabiting them was a mere squalor with a dilapidated structure trying to find existence at the mercy of the municipal authorities which can anytime lob them off their being.




    I looked into the bowl of these kids to see what they were gulping (their wobbly knees and sunken eyes compelled me to do so) it somehow appeared to me a mixture of some rice and curry. I found a woman who may have been their mother joining them. After cajoling the woman to talk to me the woman told me that they were eating rice with a curry made from chillies and further explained that they eat this food about 3-4 times a week as they are not entitled to take free ration .i asked her the reason and she seemed quite oblivious to it this time not a speck but complete shame engulfed me with its tentacles breaching my soul and mind. There was no point that I could have go on and simply took immediate leave.



    I enquired about the set of conditions these people were a perpetual scrap of. These people are a part of 80 million poor who are living on less than Rs 56 a day in the urban India. Unfortunately they are not entitled to avail schemes initiated by the government of India because of their itinerant nature. But these are very much the citizens of India and are granted all the fundamental rights and complete possession of how and when to implement them. But I feel to exercise the fundamental rights these people may need another right which the constitution framers forgot to subsume in the league of rights “RIGHT TO FOOD”. I rest my case here.

The World that was never mine....

“Every day we have to fight several insecurities which come to our way intertwined with the trials and tribulations this cynical world has to offer.”I read these lines when I was 15 years old and I encountered several dilemmas in gulping down the lines. The lines were wrapped in a cryptic aura which I kept untouched in some remote corners of my mind, not ever wanting to stumble upon it again. I detested the lines even though I couldn’t digest the intricacies of it. The lines depicted a world which was contradictory to the world my mother’s stories and paintings elucidated.




After so many years the lines came rushing back to me from the isolated corners of my mind when my eyes fell upon the newspaper mercilessly showing this picture taken during the Bhopal gas tragedy. The name of the photographer just eloped out of my tiny nutshell, though I am aware of the fact that this was an award winning capture (look at the IRONY).The first glance at this picture made me feel naked knowing that the truth I despised the most has finally dawned upon me. How terribly I wished to elude that moment out of my mind! Now each word of the lines read long back was striking a hard chord causing pain which I feel will linger on till I finally give up the paintings and story world I have always dwelled upon.



While lying on the bed that night my eyes fell upon the painting hanging above the door for the last so many years. Everything has changed in my room except that painting. The painting was a symbol of a revered and utter existence, untouched by insolent facts of life. I suddenly pounced from the bed and reached out to the 25 year old canvas which has shielded my eyes from my very existence. Now it was time to sever it off. While bringing the canvas down, it slipped off my hands with a shrilling crack. My mother came running to my room asking why I was running the errand (it has been 2 years she is asking me to let go off the canvas). I turned to her as a tear rolled from the corner of my left eye, she looked up and left without a word but we both communicated in silence in that iota of eye contact. She was sad, though she was the one who taught me to walk into the world through the canvas



I didn’t sleep that night. A void was created in my wall and in my heart. I felt cheated as I was being ripped away from my world. The world that was never mine........

oops i am a woman...!!!

 The clock hanging above the closet stroked 12


My heart begins to pound as it seemed all wet

I tried to calm myself down, forbidding not succumbing to outside howl

I peeped to see whether I can sneak

The rage in me went on its peak

The one roaming downstairs did it being a man

Then I realised, oops I am a woman!!!



My over bushy eyebrows haranguing me all the way

I asked my unwaxed hands not to follow it anyway

Visits to the salons seemed boring

The pain accompanying too is soaring

I wish to avoid this testimony,

Wanting it to be a part of some sacred epiphany

As those hunks can elude it as being men

I realised, oops I am a woman



It’s been an hour since I yelled my guts out to a gadget

Sceptics par amounting as I will ever had it

I think I severely repel technology

As it doesn’t gel well with my biology

I want to save all gizmos into my brain account

But it simply shows an error, refusing to crack and sound

I want to look into those techno savvy men

Then I realised, oops I am a woman



Reds yellows blues and greens

None of them could help me preen

I got stuck with a tuxedo and a hipster

The mirror gazed like a bedtime story monster

Fashion faux pas is on its way

And yet again I have the same thing to say

By the virtue of being a woman

I can only.......oops I am a woman