DOORSTEPS

Yesterday at my door turned up an old woman with a small kid. The women wore a red-colored soiled cotton saree and the kid was wearing a t-shirt and a small pant. She sat at my stairs started hitting the grill to call me from inside. I came out of my room into the veranda and stood there watching her and the kid. She passed her hand into the gap between the grills and asked for something. She suddenly started giving blessings and praise. She asked for something, I wasn’t clear about what she asked, I went back into the room and told my mother “a woman is begging outside”, my mother asked me to bring me her mini purse kept at a distance from where she was sitting.  I fetched her the purse and she took out a five rupee coin and told me to give it to the women. I said we should give a ten-rupee note to her, my mom clicked her tongue and took back the coin and handed me over a ten-rupee note, I went outside and gave the women the 10 rupees note. She took the money and slipped out her hand out of the grill. Now the little kid asked for money, I said that she would give you half of the money I have given to her. The women asked for a pair of slippers if had any I could spare, I noticed that the kid was barefoot. But I didn’t have any spare slipper for a kid. The women picked up her little baggage and the kid her own, they walked away from my house. I stood there and watched her go away to another house nearby just at the end of the road. It's not that I have not seen people begging, but I have always wondered how giving them a name makes them so much different from us. When she appeared at my doorsteps, she didn’t specify what she wanted, she spread her empty hands and just asked. Her empty hands are the hook which grabs everything which comes to them, she could use anything I have to give to her, she isn’t choosy, she wants anything she could get, it’s not because that she is greedy but it is because that she doesn’t have anything. So why they have a different class? Our society loves to classify and categorize people, so they have made this new one, we already have the categorization of rich and poor, upper class and lower class, upper caste, and lower caste, religious and sectorial differences but beggars are different from them. Beggars are devoid of caste, and religion, they have a single clan of people who only gather resources by asking, or more precisely begging.

How are we different from them? I cannot find any difference actually except for the physical and financial differences. It may seem to you all that why the physical and financial differences are not the actual differences. It is because we are comparing people not the amount of materialistic strength they have. When we compare people, we do not compare the number of zeros their bank balance has, because that is not comparing people that are comparing the Fiscal strength. So, to compare people, we should see what they want, for what they are always looking for throughout their life. Do they stop looking for it at some point in time, or they keep looking at their very last breath, does their needs are any different from people from other categories? Do they are so much different from us that we look at them below?

Let us first take a very good look on our ourselves and find out where our intentions lie? We would find out that we are not different from that woman that turned at my doorsteps yesterday. I say this because I felt the urge to write after seeing that women, I could see the sample of all the people in the world which ever existed in that poor woman. I think I didn’t get the real face of the women because of the dust on her face layered with the skin and have become permanent as part of her facial skin. Do we also have that kind of face, could someone we do not know be able to look at our real face once they see us. I think NO! I do not write this essay about the beggar as a metaphor but as the reflection of the whole big lavish world.

Our hands also pass through those little spaces of the grills and we try to snatch what we could, and we always want something. Maybe we have learned little specificity after the raised stature but we all remain the same; we all remain alike. It is in our mind that we are different by class, color, section, or whatever category you name it.  We just are unable to admit that we are the same as that ugly woman who is at everybody’s door but never gets invited in but gets something and leaves the door and goes to the next one. We might not look soiled or dusty but we are ugly from the inside, we are at everybody’s throat, and when we get what we want we move to the next throat. We are empty, we keep running for things sometimes we know what we want but the running never stops, the pace keeps on increasing on and seldom it slows but never stops. We are hungry beings; we all may look diverse but we are all of a similar kind and how many times I may write this but it won’t be enough for even me to accept the fact. We as a society are bound by our incapabilities and there are very good chances that we may never win but the quest will always offer a taste for the artists, They will die trying, creating, proposing, maybe they might have some fame but the victory will always look upon us and teasing and smiling. 

HOW TO REFORM

Well, there have been words out from centuries about various social reforms and various social movements took place to make this true. The point of talking about social reformation or social reform, in general, is to realize that we always need it. The surroundings and habitats we live in getting turned around in those directions which we wish it shouldn’t have, and we constantly practice to tackle and reform the situation putting things back on track. This might sound bogus but we indeed needed social reform from the beginning and we need social reform now, and by the time passes our need for the reform is increased geometrically from the last time we had had one. Whatever one does, whoever country starts it, it takes a great struggle to ignite the reform and even more blood and sweat to put everything in its place. After some time the reform is visible in the society in patches. Every mentality doesn’t accept the change and stay rigid with their ideals, sometimes these ideals are so rogue and detrimental that it causes major harms in society born out of contradiction.

It is said that “Change is the law of nature.” After witnessing so much modernization, we still have a very tiny amount of knowledge about nature. I make this statement because of our instincts towards nature which is of overpowering it. We like to think that we can control things around us, we could alter what we want and reverse what we have done but that isn’t the wise knowledge about nature. Nature governs us and we are just a phase for it, we will pass but nature will stand till eternity. But with our shooting in the dark about the changing behaviour we got the right thing. Everything changes and everything keeps on changing, this is a proven fact. If you see something still or not changing it is just relative and you don’t have a greater picture yet. Whenever we talk about saving earth or nature that is a total lie, we tell to ourselves. The truth we need to acknowledge is that we need to save ourselves not the earth. Earth has been on its place for billions of years and it will be there in the place for another billion years but what is at stake is human existence, it could get wiped out because that is what we fear and talk about saving the earth. We are not saving the earth; we are saving the liveability of humans on the surface of the earth. Nature always changes and if you won't change and you always point your fingers towards the ecosystem in which you live, that will be a failed analogy to be followed. What you need for a change is to point fingers towards yourselves, to rebuild your thought process. To acknowledge what needs to be altered to bring the desired change and that is the crux of this text. How one could reform socially, and how everything starts with oneself.

When you try to bring change in the social form and wish for social reforms as a tool for betterment one needs to think about how change works and how the change is effective and lasts for long. Let us draw a diagram to understand how change works and how to lay the bricks of change.

 “Be the change you wish to see in the world” The quote by Mahatma Gandhi solves a lot of trouble in explaining the diagram which I wish to draw before you. The quote asks you to become what you wish to see in the world but how simple is that to achieve and how complex is that to perceive, lets clear the air. Consider yourself as the unit of the world or your nation now let’s pick up a change or reform for which we have struggled and brought in the society or think that we have brought. Democracy would be a great example for the “change”, people have struggled and campaigned even lost their lives while fighting for the change but was it worth it? Does the change is prevalent in the current scenarios? To understand democracy and feel and celebrate it we must first bring democracy to ourselves If considering the nation as a whole of the society, the family would be the possible unit of the society. If you wish to establish democracy in your country or society you first need to establish in your home. You should strive for becoming democratic before you wish for a democratic system for your society. If your family has a monarch, if you support the monarchical basis at your home, it is seldom that your nation will ever reform to be democratic. Now If we consider the family as a whole, you are the unit of the family and of course the microunit of your society then there is the grave requirement to look for a change within yourself before looking in the society. What you build within yourself will be the projection of society. What you sow within yourself you will taste the ripening in the society, because you are what builds a society and your intent is the intent of the society. The reform about which we talk much should start from the very zero of ourselves, from the deep within of our hearts, from the chaotic minds we possess, from the serene silence we exhibit, from the love of our mothers, from the grace of our fathers, from where we started from where we will end. That will be what the real In-Quilab will look like, from there you could look into the endless revolutions, from where you could look upon the whole mankind, from where you could breathe for your life, from where you will find your soul. The reform will hold your hands and will flourish with you across the world. You will flow like an ocean of an idea, you won’t be stopped, you won’t be shaken, the reform which is needed will hail around the world.