Fire-pitted souls

This one is for those who daily put their physical selves in the furnace to earn survival morsels--the laborers, peasants, daily wage earners, artisans, roadside vendors, etc. Their whole body sheds sweaty tears day in and day out. So the salty sea of miseries pours out through the thick walls of their rough skin. It rarely finds an outlet through eyes! Why? Because these are glassy hard balls--the fiery pits where dreams, tears, hopes and humanity get burnt incessantly! Hunger always staring in the face. Most of the common realities just wildest dreams. Every walk a struggle to survive. Every smile just a shadow of pain. A wish to earn an extra penny in whatever you do, think, say or plan. There is no respite. Hunger becomes your shadow, always with you, your companion. After a time you become used to it, get addicted to it. The starving shadow becomes the self. You love it more than even the self. The personality becomes a hard-knotted dead wood. A dark hole which sucks its own light. A vacuum which sucks in air. A life that eats itself to appear more like death. An emptiness that chucks away any space needed for a normal self. Yaa, poverty makes one almost sub-human, a different species. Is one life-time sufficient to escape its clutches? You become a brute like the bull snorting, pulling the cart, staring on the road, tearing the hooves, taking one step after the other. You cannot look up and see this wide, spacious world. Your vision is limited to the grains in the sands around your feet which you have to pick up and eat to survive another day. There was no past, just like there is no present, and exactly like there will be no future. Well, where to go and what to do!?