Of Gut-Wrenching Poverty

Life in India is full of contradictions, as any visitor to the country will tell you. For someone living in India, however, reconciling these contradictions is essential for survival. It is hard if not impossible, to be faced with crippling poverty on a daily basis and not feel an overwhelming sense of sadness and guilt.
My home state of Maharashtra was recently contemplating changing the rules so that taxi permits would only be issued to persons who had lived in the state for at least fifteen years and can "read and write marathi (the local language)". The move is primarily aimed at keeping migrant workers from poorer states from acquiring local jobs. In a country where a vast number of people are illiterate, where we have failed to provide our poorest and most vulnerable sections of society with a minimum standard of living, where large sections of the population go hungry, this is what the Government imagines up. Perhaps we should soon expect a set of minimum qualifications that all of the urban poor must meet if they want to subsist amongst the more affluent. The irony is not lost on me.

Unaccustomed Earth, Language, Identities

I recently began reading Jhumpa Lahiri's 'Unaccustomed Earth'. One of the stories describes the life of Rupa, the daughter of Bengali immigrant parents, born and brought up in the USA. At one point in the story, Rupa reflects on the fact that although she grew up speaking Bengali when she was young, her conversing skills in Bengali are not what they used to be and that she has begun to find it harder and harder to carry on a conversation in Bengali - her native language. As a child growing up in a multilingual household, in many ways, I understand her predicament. You would think that growing up immersed in multiple languages, I would be highly conversant in all of them. Unfortunately as it turned out, I essentially spoke only English at home and I would describe my abilities in the other languages, that I grew up with, as being average at best. As I think back now, I feel a sense of loss. It almost feels like I am losing a link to a part of my culture. That being said, the fact of the matter is that we live in an increasingly globalized world. Being comfortable and conversant in English, the language of my adopted home (and across much of the world) has proved to be extremely helpful. So I guess that in a sense, this loss has a silver lining after all- I have moved from being a citizen of my native country to being a citizen of the world.