DEMOCRACY, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Therespuram, Tamil Nadu, South of India:

Wow, shall be nice to be a rock star. Today I had a glimpse of it when, in a packed room, hundreds of kids and their mothers started greeting and clapping at me.
Wow, it was gorgeous, I was the star. Me, the formerly low esteem man finally had his moment of glory.
Just kidding, of course.
But I really thought how rock stars must feel when they are having thousands of young people screaming at their feet. Shall be exciting, isn`n it? Having so much power on so many people, must be like a drug or something, illusion at its maximum stage.

But my moment of glory just vanished when I got closer to these women and I listened to them, their stories, their problems and their agony.
Here are some of such stories, all real and tremendously true, stories directly coming from a fishermen slum called Therespuram, Tamil Nadu.

MARIA MONICA, her father was a fisherman who got burned when a stove caught fire in the boat. He is now unable to work, the family has no food and debts for about 15.000 rupees

MADATHI; her mother is deaf and dumb, his father lost his boat and got injured during a storm when he was out on the sea. In losing the boat he lost everything he had, except the debt which amounts of 40.000 rupees. (The was made to buy the boat he lost).

MARIA PRASANTH: his father went away with another woman. He has two brothers one of them is selling fish to help the family to survive but is not enough. They are literally starving, debts made by the father before he went away are Rs 20.000

KALAYARASI: she has a heart disease and need operation. Her mother came to me in tears asking for help. They need Rs 25.000 for the surgery. Father is a cook and earning very little, they already have Rs 10.000 debts.

MURGESHWARI, a handicapped girl, her mother died and now she lives with the grand-mother. Her father remarried and left her and the brother behind without caring. She is severely sick, grand mother she has no money to even have her visited by a doctor.

NANDHINI is a small beautiful girl with a heart disease. She will be needing injections until she will be 18 years old. She belongs to a very poor family, and she has 3 sisters and 1 brother. Father is a fisherman but is not earning enough to provide the medicines for his little one.

And at the end of the day I met with the “Widows group”, part of the “Poor People`s Bank Project” that we just did launch I the hope to ease those women`s problems.
Their tales of sorrow and pain are really heartbreaking.
Many of them did not eat for the last 4 days, they have no work because of the bad weather.
They all worked as labour in the fishing processing companies. Because of bad weather for the last 4 days no boat went to the sea, thus no catch and no work for them.
When they work they earn 1 rupee for every single Kg of fish they clean, maximum quantity they can clean in one day is 15 kg. So they are earning only 15 rupees a day.
They have average debts from 10.000 to 30.000 rupees, all of them, young and old have children and… they are desperate.

Shall I go on?
And now I can`t help thinking about some people, some very famous people who are shamelessly paid an absurd amount of money for what then?
To play football, basketball, golf, to sing, act or I think about the money wasted on war (ring some bell Mr. Bush) to export democracy.
What the fuck is democracy?
Democracy is there only for the rich people, what kind of democracy can be existing in this world when so many resources are wasted for simply nothing, while children, women, men and whole families are starving, dying and could be easily saved?

How can a system allow that sportsmen, artists, models, stylists and so many others could be paid such an awful amount of money, just to perform whatever they do?
Of course is not those individuals` mistake, they have been given those wages by the industry, by the power, by a wicked system which is using them to hypnotise the masses.
The problem lies in this system that pays them so much, in a system that promotes this model, where money and success, success and money only matter.
So I say fuck the system, I hate a system which only benefits very few rich people and deprives so many desperate and poor ones.
Fuck a system that allows famine in Africa, fuck a system that allows child trafficking, fuck a system which does not care about its poor, underprivileged masses.

Acceptance; Buddha talks about acceptance but this is really too much, seeing tears falling down from those mothers who have no food for their kids, who have not enough money to buy them medicines, who have to go to the loan sharks to get few rupees to survive and then have to struggle all life just to pay the interests?
Still I can not accept that, still anger soars inside me when I see all this injustice in the world.
This is something I can not accept, I may be far away from Nirvana (indeed I am) but still I can not turn a blind eye on this. All those tears could easily be dried with next to nothing but they keep falling from those poor women`s eyes, forever.

These people at Therespuram, will have a Tsunami to face everyday of their life.
TV cameras are now away their wonderful beaches, news people are looking elsewhere but reality still bites, here reality is poverty, hunger and death.
I feel so much powerless, frustrated and angry.

Fuck a system where money is all that matters, where a man could waste millions in buying a football team, where money is wasted in useless F1 cars, in movies, in wars, where even these people`s own corrupted governments are neglecting them..


Therespuram, November 26th, 2548

C – COPYRIGHT / Claudio Romano