Who Owns the Sky?

In a place where people compete over the ownership of the sky, walking and standing on the ground stand as an aberration. The former devises plans (and invents tools) to steer the sky clear of the path and increase its visibility and charts the boundary and conquers it; the latter fails to clump together whatever remnants of courage they have to prove a point down below. The struggle is the same – with variations, though.

Obstacles surrounding the sky include a few meteors, humidity, dark clouds, and probably some visibility-blocking massive birds. With weaponry crafted and brought into existence by Papas and Grand-Papas, they gloss it and, with a little struggle, bring down the giant black birds. Set the meteors ablaze and charred. Spray magical foam here and there to clear the humid spots. Shoot the haze substantially afar. The empire now rules both the sky and the earth!

To the surprise of the majority, the empires are several. First they achieve what they call a hard-earned acquisition, and then they mould their milestone and metamorphose it into an everlasting weapon to launch an offensive against their own peers. All for the profit, luxury, and hedonistic kicks. Of the economy and the economic growth, they don’t give a damn. The economy grows or slumps; not their business. Just expanding the horizons of their wittiness, the extent of input and output, and large-scale land grabs.

Not only is it limited to the aggressive and passive tactics to increase the base of their empire and the undying urge to bring a competitor down, but there is also a tactic to inflict a creatively created pain on their subordinates. Subordinates are caught; they are helpless. They turn into a machine, without wires, complying with every unfair request. Sweat is squeezed out of them, and they are handed over with a few bucks – to enjoy a middle-class lifestyle.

The lesser mortals analyze the chaos, down to the minute detail, lose themselves in the complexity of intricacies, become philosophers, and live in imaginations. With no generational accumulation of base, they curse themselves and the system. The pain of capitalistic oppression flows in their veins like blood. Yet, they develop what Karl Marx called class consciousness. They identify as someone born to serve others, receive trivial returns, and then die. They inherit surnames that have been manufactured elsewhere by someone else. Every abnormal thing becomes normal, a new norm, and OK.

Infirm efforts by the governmental and non-governmental agencies to strike some vague balance between the haves and have-nots don’t suffice when you are psychologically and emotionally devastated. Psychological suffering rendered henceforth by rising inflation. Emotional by having hardly anything to tackle the rising heat – of both the sun and the nearby ACs.

A newborn of such a kind can’t and won’t have the ability to tackle Papa-Ke giants. They will curse the economy, the government, and themselves. Land that cost five lakh rupees fifteen years ago now costs two crore rupees. Something to think about for the destitute, if we think at all.

No shallow glittering-and-insufficient welfare schemes will work. Even if that worked, to what extent? No amount of sugar-coating conceals the cavity forever within.

Can I imagine standing my ground and looking into the sky to conquer it when I am given a paltry sum of twenty thousand rupees a month? Is it logical to imagine such a scenario when you have people around you who can imagine it well – with kanals of land? It’s like breaking the Chinar tree with a needle. Total hogwash.

Bottom-line: The have-nots don’t need motivational Gyaan. No slogans. They need structural solutions. This is not a call for apathy or anarchy; this is to address the grave, grave injustices done to the thousands of millions of people at the receiving end of both the mental and material agony. Dot.