hungry क्या ?

for urban privileged Indians these two words define the ‘cool’ pizza outlet and for the rest of the country it is nothing but a poignant reminder of a famished existence.

the two words – ‘Hungry Kya’ (Hungry in English and Kya in Hindi) would roughly translate to Are (You) Hungry. to me and the vast majority of the people I interact with, it would mean - lift up the phone, dial one of those repeating integer numbers, choose between extra cheese and extra spicy and wait edgily for the next half hour for the steaming pizzas (with free garlic bread that was on offer). But for the greater part of this country, it is the inspiration behind the everyday routine of drudgery for a less gratifying and less calorific meal.

a rather peculiar verity is that the bill from the pizza place is probably more than the total earnings of a BPL (Below Poverty line) family for a week. numbers are not important here; is the comparison between one pizza and several bowls of runny broth even justified?

I know enough people who indulge in this opulence over the weekends (or may be more often), but refuse to part with a coin at the traffic signal to one of the cripples or old women with beseeching eyes. of course.., i understand that we must help only those who help themselves and that we must not make people charity-dependant and the like…
Still, it just repels me that the richer fools have no qualms about donating their earnings to high-end pizza parlours (PP) whose edibles do nothing more than remove the weight off your purse and add it on your bulk. no offence to the PPs; they just happen to be the targets of my rage at the moment. this indictment holds good for any of the other eateries, which charge not for what they serve but for their trade name. (In my opinion, it’s plain pilfering.)
But it’s their business, and they too must survive, monstrously abetted in this grotesque mission by the more prosperous Indians.

nowhere in the world are the contrast and the divide between the rich and the poor as evident as it is in India. this country is made of a billion people, all largely alike, but contrasted by the bleak austerity of their hunger. The children of the same nation, the same blood flows through their veins, with the same fortitude and the same passion; but the hoi polloi wake up each morning weaker, spirits broken by hunger and callously stripped of a birthright.

we live in a world that is neither fair nor strives to be so. For most of us (I admit this holds good for me too), we are too absorbed in living our lives, that the subsistence of the destitute is hardly a matter of concern. Perhaps, I ought to give this matter a little more thought before I enter the pizza parlour the next time.