Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

A Tangible Change

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A Tangible Change

I was travelling by the public coaster and it was passing through the slums of the city. Everything was saddening. There were children crying in the streets. Majority of these children were bare-footed and bare-headed and shivered in the cold winds of winter. The mere look of these children could either arouse disgust or pity, but nothing pleasant. There were youngsters with dim and frustrated faces, lacking the light of youth in their eyes. Majority of them appeared to have come from work, which was apparent from their mud-filled hair and torn skins. There were old men who seemed to be struggling to sustain their lives. There were men who looked very exhausted to make the ends meet. I also witnessed a woman shouting with a shopkeeper. I am sure her money had fallen short, as always, and would be trying to make the best of the bargain in this regard. This is not limited to the people only. Dark and small houses, stinking and dirty streets, and other limited facilities make the life even more difficult and dull. Similarly, children could have been noticed bringing water from far places. Electricity and other civic facilities are only a dream for them.

Then let’s go to another part of the city. As you enter the area, you immediately develop a pleasant feeling. There are big houses which are spread on a large area. Every house has a large garden or a lawn where you can see children playing happily, and they appear as if angels have landed who are cherishing the innocent and pure joys of life. These children are wearing the most beautiful imported clothes which have further enhanced their innocent beauty. At times, we see an old man or lady who appears to be healthy, contented and having a strange haughtiness in his or her style. Everything attached with this community shouts loudly that they are the chosen ones. Latest and shining cars, beautifully decorated rooms, clean and silent streets, covered by green trees on both the sides of the road, and every single facility has been improvised with every minute detail.

Both of the above scenarios can have absolutely opposite impacts on the people. For a person who is struggling hard to keep himself or the family alive, the best recreation is to have food enough to fill up his belly or feed his family. With such a background, almost everyone is caught in the fear of economic failure and thus everyone tries to make some addition to the income of the family. There are men who walk to work and when they return home, they are absolutely tired and disappointed, as their meager income never meets their expenses.

Once I was studying the behavior of workers while drinking tea in breaks and it surprised me how they can long such avariciously for a single cup of tea. Such a desire and feeling is very difficult to be understood unless a person gets into the same situation and feels the taste of a cup of hot tea which is offered to you when you are hungry and working in cold for a number of hours. While sitting in a hot and pleasant room, adequately supplied with fruits and drinks, we can never understand this philosophy.

Here, the biggest loss is the loss of being dignified and respectable. As you loiter here and there without much attention and importance, slowly and gradually you develop a feeling that you are of no use to anyone and thus you lose your credibility in your own eyes.

In short, moments of joy and recreation are very less and every difficulty lands on them to be very severe. Aids or HIV is not a disease itself. It makes your immunity system very weak and thus your body cannot fight or overcome diseases and thus any small illness like flu or cold becomes fatal and doesn’t leave your body. You might have noticed members of a very poor family fighting or shouting on petty issues that seem to be very less important to us like buying a pair of shoes to the children but if one doesn’t have enough money to buy bread, can hardly make any such expense.

On the other hand, let’s have a look at the behavior or the situation of the rich. First, they are very much busy in carrying out their businesses or jobs and sometimes don’t find time to their family members but when they get free, they have their own attachments and interests. Elders are mostly found busy in buying new cars, houses or attending social gatherings where they sit with the people of their own kind. Youngsters are busy in buying new gadgets and looking for opportunities to pass their times in a variety of interesting ways. Older members of this group enjoy the comfort that has been supplied with the wealth of the family and make sure that this set up of prosperity should exist and continue.

At times, their conscience is shaken by the miseries of people around them but they have a proven weapon to repel this attack by saying, ‘These are the lazy people. Nobody gifted me this prosperity and I earned it by my hard work, luck and better thinking strategy. If they cannot think better or their luck is not clicking, then how can I help?’

Some of them try to silent this inner voice by giving out some money to poor or doing other similar temporary works of charity and thus they free themselves from the court of their conscience.

Some of them even say this, ‘I am happy and have a good life and I haven’t created any problem to anyone and have not harmed anyone, then why I should I blame myself for this?’

But it is said that if there is fire at one corner of the city and you are not taking any kind of responsibility to control, it would definitely reach to your house as well and turn it into ashes.

French revolution is one of the most bloody and tragic examples of such a situation when the gap between the poor and the rich reached to an extent that only the blood of sacrifice could fill up the space. Rich were having pleasant and wonderful lives while poor were only struggling to keep their existence. When poor saw that the scenario was not going to change and rich were fully drunk in their luxuries, they rose and then set each and everything of rich into fire. They killed thousands of rich and did not spare even their children or families.

It thus becomes the responsibility of rich to do something permanent to bring equilibrium in the society. It doesn’t mean that they should give easy money to the poor and develop the habit of laziness in them. There is a Chinese saying that, ‘Don’t give me the fish, rather teach me how to fish’. In the same way, we can take steps that can bring permanent and positive changes in the lives of poor. Very easy way is to establish schools where deserving poor children should be given free education. This experiment has successfully been done in Turkey which has changed the fate of the nation. It is not necessary that everyone should open a school, you can take 2-3 children of poor families to a school and bear their expenses or you can go to a good school and inform the school administration to support 2-3 poor students and they would easily make the rest of the arrangements. Educating 2-3 students is not so difficult but if every one of us starts this work, this would definitely bring a great change in the society. Otherwise, I fear that we can also face an Afghan revolution which might be bloodier than the French revolution.

(Muhammad Rasool Shah works as Academic Coordinator at Barakat Int’l School, Kabul. He can be reached at muhammadrasoolshah@gmail.com)

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