By-Two Kaapi in an oilfield

A chilly Bangalore night. 10 pm.
The city is coming to a halt.
A tiresome day draws to a close.
I am walking back to my apartment talking on my cell.
End the call, and head into the chat house to my right.
Fill my half-filled stomach with a Bhelpuri.
10 rupees. I pay the owner with a worn-out soiled ten-rupee note.
My stomach is filled. Time to head home and sleep.
I start walking back.

A 30-odd year old guy pushes his vegetable cart back home.
Clad in a black lungi (the Sabarimala dress code).
He seems to be stuggling in the cold, up the incline.
His 10 year old daughter walks up behind him and lends him a hand.
Just behind her is her elder sister (probably a couple of years older).
Pushing yet another cart.

A 10-year old kid. A 13-year old kid.
An age to go to school, come back and play in the fields.
Now, clad in a torn scarf pushing a cart in the cold.

If only, one person in each chat house across Bangalore (there must be a 1000-odd such ones), didn't eat that one bhelpuri. Didn't spend that one 10-rupee note. Instead, that was used to educate those two sisters. (That would've been more than ten grand!)

I would have one day woken up in the land of my dreams.
In a fully literate India.
My Two Cents of Hope.