Athirst for Satiety

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

Ankush kept watching the crowd skip, hop, bogie and dance spilling colours. They took pleasure in getting drenched in the colourful water, but his eyes were focussed on the square holy place where the effigy of holi was burnt last night. He had seen the crowd gather last night around the effigy, which was like a triangular cone that was painfully made from the dried stalks of wood by the gardener and  a few other employees of the apartments. This year, the environmentally conscious crowd had gathered, dried cow dung cakes to sustain the  burnt effigy for a longer time. The effigy wasn’t very large, but would definitely burn long enough. It was surrounded by bricks from the garden. The gardener was given the task of cleaning the lawns and watering the garden to keep it cool. It was a social event, a gathering after six months, to be precise after Diwali.  Burning the effigy is termed Holika Dahan  or Kamudu pyre symbolising the burning of Holika, the devil as written in the scriptures. According to the traditions in Hinduism, Holi celebrates the end of Holika to save Prahalad  by  Lord Vishnu in the city of Multan, and thus Holi gets its name. In olden days, people use to contribute a piece of wood or two for  this Holika bonfire representing the burning of Holika.( wikipedia)

Ankush waited for the event more than anyone else. He lived with his mother and little sister in a hutment on a piece of open land near the newly built luxury flats. This was the only piece of land that was left uninhabited. The hutment was built by Ankush, his mother and sister Shoni, but the land did not belong to Ankush. No one wanted this piece of land as it was small and could never be used to build an independent house,  building apartments on this was unimaginable. No one knew the owner of this place or his existence. Occasionally, Ankush had felt  the presence of the policemen who would  threaten to oust them, saying they had encroached on the  piece of land. Ankush would plead, let out the tears that lined his eyes relentlessly to burst out of his thirteen year old demeanor to a five year old lad. The policemen would leave them in peace only after collecting a small amount of cash. It would mean a safe shelter, but hungry stomachs.

Ankush was thrown back into the reality to see the pyre  seethe and ruble  and  cool down.  Last night, the eloquent families had dressed in traditional clothes, the ladies carried a Thali with sweetmeats, money, flowers, vermillion dust, turmeric powder and coconut. They had  thrashed the coconut on the ground and thrown money in the pyre after trailing around the pyre.  Everyone relished the sweets, but Ankush had not eaten anything since morning. He was a growing lad, and he could never stop dreaming of food. He would try to concentrate on studies in the school, but he could never because of the awful pangs of hunger. Ankush and his family ate just twice in a day, which left him famished. He would sometimes see a piece of bread thrown to the dogs in the school. He could never tell his friends nor teachers about his hunger or that he deserved the food more than the dog, and that his sunken eyes, his frail body and his protruding stomach were clear signs of  his malnutrition.

Ankush often lingered near the expensive wedding halls, surrounded by lavish lawns to party on. He could run freely into one of these very close to his hutment as an employee of the place named Bhujan was known to Ankush. Bhujan had been Ankush’s father’s friend, but with the friend’s untimely death in an accident, he had severed all the threads of friendship. Bhujan would fill platefuls of food and hand it out to Ankush, but that was rare. Ankush wondered as to why people spent beyond their capacities during these lavish weddings, he was astonished at the fact that these people squandered food when they did not want to consume food. He had no answer to the question, and his mother would whisper saying it was their ‘Karma’ to suffer the pangs of hunger. Ankush unquestionably wanted to stop his stomach growling  and concentrate on his studies, yet it would never happen.

  Today Ankush felt it was a golden opportunity, the kids were busy playing and elders busy in their talk. No one noticed Ankush poke  piece of wood in the ash of the burnt Holi. He kept poking, when the stick would not budge at a point, he would clear the ash and collect the coin from the spot. He worked in a haste to collect as many as possible. He wanted to eat sumptuous food, and the thought invigorated the boy with a renewed energy. He collected a lot of money and ran home to show it to his loving mother.

Ankush found his mother sitting near the doorway of the hutment cleaning the sparsely  bought  vegetables. Ankush gave her a hug and thrust his hand in the pocket to pull out a few coins. His mother gave a waned smile and looked at him questioningly. Ankush burst out in glee, he said ‘ Amma, I  will eat a lot of food today till I feel full, lot of rotis and sabji, please make some kheer for little Shoni”. His mother got ready with the list of foodstuffs to be bought from the market, she asked Ankush ‘how did you earn this money, it looks dirty and why did you not get your reward in rupees? As Ankush began animatedly about the pyre from which he stole the coins, lo behold, he felt a stinging slap on his face. He looked at his mother in anguish as he rubbed his cheeks. His mother hugged him and said, ‘if we were to live a life of deceit, we could have stolen money from the cemetery where the dead are burnt with gold, but I sought to render you a life of nobility and dignity’. Ankush kept quiet as tears flowed from his eyes, he could hear his conscience question him asking ‘is it right to burn the dead with gold and let the living die without food?

“Hunger makes a thief of any man.”― Pearl S. Buck