A Truck driver's wife pursues her inveterate responsibilities with ceaseless emergency, everyday she wakes up pretty early and walks a good couple of kilometres through the labyrinth of dilapidated households in her neighbourhood to bring water. Then, she cooks for her children an undernourished meal, not a breakfast for she cannot afford three meals a day. She readies them up for school, walks them to the school herself, for she cannot afford to pay for an auto rickshaw. And, her motherly inclination deters her from letting the kids all by themselves, for the mad street dogs might eat them up into pieces, or they might fall into one of those bore wells dug up by the government and left open, or the street peddlers might kidnap and sell them. She then leaves for work, in construction sites carrying weights that would out rightly be denied as physically impossible for a woman in a more progressive nation. She would then leave to clean utensils or clean floors in a couple of households before returning to the school.
She would then walk her children back to home, cooks and feeds them, then puts them to sleep. Before falling back into the abyss of deep sleep, she would for a fleeting moment contemplate as to what her husband must be going through. She would sympathize with his physically challenging work; she would wonder how he is doing with the night shifts, the pressure of delivering against ever stringent timelines. Did he break from work at a roadside decrepit motel for dinner tonight? He cannot eat bellyful, for then he would fall asleep while driving, which is catastrophic; he cannot under eat, for he would feel hungry. With tears in her eyes, she recollects, how she never ventured an opinion on his life style, would he drive carefully? Would he drive responsibly? Questions torment her, but she ponders over them in vain, for she never had a choice.
Would he remain chaste?, she never asked, would he stay away from drinking?, she never troubled him with sermons, she never asked, it’s as if they both worked on a mutually consented yet allegorical, yet never mentioned agreement, for he only stayed at home for a mere couple of days every month. And, she understood, that his back ached beyond endurance, so he drank, and he had a copious belly and he could not sit down on the floor. But she cannot afford to buy a chair and a table, besides there was no room for a table in her murky place that could only be called home, if one was to walk inside and see all the four walls that surrounded the place. Because from outside, one only saw the mud heaps from construction site on one wall, garbage cans stuffed up against another, a tree precariously hanging against the third and slum's waste flowing directly underneath filling her house with an air of humiliating human sustenance. But she carries on, with the aroma of human endurance.
Potential catastrophes that are immediately evident- would her husband return home safely? Would her children excel in studies? Would she live long enough to see her children turn into individuals of great character? Would her husband stay healthy? She inquires with anger and fury that subsides the very moment the rage unfurls, for she is helpless.
Then, on a fine morning, Government promises her a new home with a gas stove and cylinder. What she doesn't know is that government estimated an increase in tax collections, what with so many graduates pursuing engineering in Indian companies. To the dismay of truck driver's wife, government fails to deliver its promises. So, what happened, one wonders? And the society's "self assertive" vanities stand right in front, submitting answers.
Every engineer or for that matter every employee of this nation is constantly endeavouring to save his tax liabilities. They all delude themselves, between themselves, they all discover a new identity to the word "liability", and squeeze out the honest portions of truck driver's wife in this economic chain; the share that she is entitled to by the judicious calculations by if not the noblest, at least methodical political men of this country.
Truck driver's wife suffers through an infinite maze of emotional torment and increasingly uncertain future. She mentally prepares herself for any catastrophe, and instead of supporting her, all the wage earners of this nation are working collectively towards eliminating choices for her, priding them selves with another "self assertive" phrase "saving tax". Only an outsider can watch the horrific tale, for the insiders have deemed to delude themselves with self assertive and self sustainable ludicrous ideas such as “saving tax”. It is not saving tax; it is squeezing from the hands of women like the truck driver’s wife what is manifestly hers by all means.
How can a nation full of educated men and women degrade into weaving this unimaginably loathsome conspiracy? Because education here is depraved of its actual meaning, and in its place is substituted with another meaning of a preposterous quality – education, now and here means, to be able to be employed, to earn, to save tax (to take way from the poor), then to establish institutions that would work for the benefit of the poor. In this process, an (ignorant not truly educated, for a truly educated would smite back at this conspiracy with such a force that the scheme would shatter into ruins) individual is respected by ignorant society he is part of.
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