My Home My Heart (painted poem)

With money you can buy houses, but money cannot buy for you a home. 

House is where the Home is;
Home is where the Heart is.

 

Squatters in Mumbai - fallout of Development in India

(Image: Shelter for the bus passengers / Shelter for the Displaced in Mumbai: Contradiction in Mumbai's Urban Design. 

Both togather symbolise India's Development Planning, and exposes its hypocrisy.)

Whenever I walk down-to-earth in Mumbai I notice 55 million people live in the slums and squatters, struggle for their daily bread.

It is their Daily Prayer in Action to Life. They aren't activist like the elite; they are actionist without duplicity, and without words.

It seems their number is daily rising defying the official statistics:

just like the rising national GDP of India;
just like rising Stock Exchange indexes in the money market;
just like rising numbers of skyscrapers rising higher and higher on Mumbai's skyline;
just like rising number of vacant blocks of houses awaiting higher returns of their investments.
It seems all these have lost their heart and home, both, in the money market, though the squaters on the street-side!

The reason to notice them is simple: Once I practiced as architect-planner; once I was a teacher; once I was landless teen age farm labourer; once I too was a displaced person. Only I had opportunity for formal education in time.

All these people have come from many regions of India. They come from the places wherever Mumbai has left its footprint. The rulers of India must not ignore this fact. The capitalist – Indian and foreigners – who have settled in Mumbai are capable enough to buy over all of them, but where they can get educated slaves why should they care?
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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.