Poverty: The Cruel Unmasking of Life's Beautiful Illusions

 **October 2006**

Poverty might be a curse, but it has its own poor reasons and uses as well.

Your poor clothes, the dilapidated walls of your house, the struggle for a few bucks, helplessness in the face of illnesses—all these make life hellish.

But at the same time, especially if you were fortunate enough to have gone through better days in the past, it does you a great favour by taking you out of the refined, made-up, groomed mould or caste and placing you on the parched, neglected, famished side road, no longer under the spotlight.

You see the real game of life, the illusory goggles blown off your face.

You see the facelessness behind those finely masked countenances.

You see the shameless shamelessness in the eyes which you always wished to be the most gracious and good ones, for you never had a real peek into them because they were always hidden behind the stylish, colourful film of the glasses.

Now, however, they stare at you in their full, natural colours.

The layers of makeup no longer hide the abhorrent creases on the faces.

Though you are lost and suffer much in this sideshow, the main show, with its fake characters, false themes and wrong colours, also comes crashing down before your all-watching eyes.

Now nobody is interested in hiding the ugly self from you because, as a virtual nonentity, you are no longer in the race of outsmarting, outmanoeuvring, reciprocal beneficence, etc.

You are a ragged, cobwebbed, peeling-off figure.

So poverty is not that much of a hellish thing as it is made out to be.

Maybe those who have never tasted good days since their birth, and hence have grown up seeing the naked truth in its full monstrosity, will justifiably disagree with this observation.

It is but natural for them to think so because there never was a *behind* for them; there never was a blinding screen between them and the world outside.

But at least those who fall down the economic rungs should give this much credit to the great curse of society.

It unveils so many things which would have passed for reality forever, had it not been for the fall in economic status.

Even with this great and ennobling service, I wish there were no poor person on the face of the earth.

Because, even with its great service, poverty remains a curse.