Even the rich prick their nose

India is a country of infinite vastness, with various cultures, multiple languages, innumerable trends and different segments of lifestyle: ultra rich, medium rich, rich, upper middle-class, middle-class, lower middle-class, poor, very poor and extremely poor. Amongst these, though everyone is a human but yet there is a hierarchy of their actions. People have divided this nation into cities, bigger cities, villages and small-villages, all of which inhabit humans from one of the above class. Even the smallest village and the poorest man holds a reserve of infinite use to the rich and iconic citizens of this nation.

In my previous article I talked about the rural India being called as “backward”, the one where farmers toil their fields with sweat and blood, where women shrink their youthful bosoms reaping harvests under the scorching sun and where children waste their childhood grazing cattle. All of this that they’ve wasted contributes to the upper segment of the society. The farmer’s blood and sweat gives us pulses and wheat, the women’s bosoms dry up while making the farmer’s efforts count; and the Horlicks and Bournvita could have never been put to use if those little education-deprived kids would have not sacrificed their schools for grazing  Rampyaari and Shyampyaari, the cattle.

            Our nation even today is not observed as one, but two: the ever-glittering city India, and the dark-after-six village India. The former is where people count themselves as humans, and the latter don’t get to count themselves as anything, because the former have already considered them as upcoming humans. In the talks of the former, the latter are also better known as ‘uncivilized’, ‘superstitious’, ‘mannerless’ and of course ‘backward’. It is a bitter truth that every house in the city has a servant or a maid, who falls from a village or small town; but still the complaints of the city folks for them never dies. They hate it when the servant pricks his nose or scratches his armpits, but seldom they teach him the basic etiquettes and often only scold.

            For the ones who are capable of sniffing and mewing in English, it is only a fortune that we’re born and brought up in a city. If we just consider it a bit closely, we’ll realize that it wasn’t us who decided where you and I were to be born and what identities we were to carry in this lifespan. We are perhaps given this life, wherever we are today, just to serve others and keep them happy, rather than to criticize and complaint. It is a fortune that we are living in a city, and it thus becomes our moral duty to serve the ones who fall short of services and benefits than us.

            The rural India, also best known for its remedies and cures out of herbs and superstitions is mostly availed by the city folks, than the villagers themselves. At the time of need, the insignificantly small, illiterate, mannerless men are also worshipped as god and tasks like walking on burning charcoals, sometimes eating them too, eating ashes, dancing naked, and a lot more are also performed by the richer ones, just in hopes of getting better. What one calls superstition is what one himself falls for at the need of the hour.

It is high time that we now start believing that there aren’t two Indias, but one. One single nation with swaying mustard fields and glittering skyscrapers, with both barren mud streets and polished six-lanes connecting us back together. It is time to believe in brotherhood and humanity, to accept that we’re one. For if one has the advantages of the advancement of science and technology, the other has an infinitely strong inheritance from the past. It is time to act as one, to offer an equal status to everyone as being a human anyone can feel the urge to itch and sometimes not necessarily in the dark, even the rich prick their nose.

**This article was picked by TOI, read here: http://m.timesofindia.com/nri/contributors/contributions/udai-narayan-singh-bisht/Even-the-rich-prick-their-nose/articleshow/35665017.cms