Hmm.

Being part of the relatively luckier part of population, I probably have no right to be the food-critic of the same dish. But after some deliberate wrong turns in life, I am on a constant diet of poverty.

Firstly, not everyone can afford poverty. If you are filthy rich, you have even slimmer chance than others. It is one unsavoury meal, but you can never buy it with money. The feeling of chunks of it, stuck against the walls of your foodpipe, itching your larynx, how a gulp of water can’t shove it down or a bout of vomit can’t thrust it out; rarely could be empathised. You get hungrier with every meal. 

Secondly, the frozen shoulders. Being a poverty-binger, shoulders get stiffer, they pulsate with spells of sweet aches.They are the force on the other side of the rope of the pulley system, dragging up the stubborn loads of debts. YES. DEBTS. Debts are not the pickles or salt or pepper of the dish. They are the staple part of it. The credit card bill alerts, the real loan sharks, the loan shark-turned-fishy-friends, the EMI  of regular, small, medium and supreme sized banked loans, the electricity bills, maid bills, house rent, the this and that taxes; are like the ocean that I expect to contain into a happy aquarium. My shoulders are too much black-and-blue to do that.

Thirdly, it is not just the shoulders that are frozen, as your heart is the coldest bitch. As everyone will throttle it, suffocate it, slap it, squish it, strip it naked of its self-esteem; its choice is an eternal winter, tucking away into hibernation. A defensive mechanism in short. The guilt of borrowing, the guilt of not returning by deadline, the guilt of tossing off a better future, the guilt of building a ladder of mistakes to climb into a grander hell, and the guilt of this-and-that, might trigger a cycle of self-hatred, self-blame and hopelessness. The simplicity of worldly people’s thinking processes, equating bank balance to the amount of deserving respect, might slap your brains black and give a reality check. Hence, it is cosier to stay iced.

It is heartbreakingly tough and scary, to be a part of this herd. It might be way tougher for people not just eating, but breathing, dressing and shitting poverty. 

But being poor might give you life lessons. It pushes you to the edge, to survive in the harshest days, surprisingly, you learn you get through anything, everything. It comes as a shock, that you actually manage to wake up to tomorrow, the day after, day after after and the day after after after. How tenacious a human heart can be. How temporary everything, every person is. Despite a meal of a bland soup of watery water and sometimes, just the luxurious imaginary lunch-supper, you just manage to go on. Not everyone can do that, you know. So, please keep fighting.