Abhijit Naskar's Blog - Posts Tagged "inequality"

Post-apocalyptic world will
never unfold like in the movies,
the post-apocalyptic world already
exists, may be not for you, as you’re
born on the lucky side of privilege –

but that world of drought, flood, famine,
plague and persecution already exists –
the post-apocalyptic world is now,
ten steps from the door of the privileged.

Privilege defines whether
it’s a post-apocalyptic world –
step outside the castle,
and apocalypse is everywhere.

Or you just Netflix and chill,
while human communities crumble!
Apes binge-watch the occupation,
deportation and genocide,
aloof from their smart-castle.

Do I have any right to happiness,
when millions go without food and shelter!
That’s why, there’s not a trace of luxury in my life,
I churn out humanitarian electricity all waking hours.

Most expensive clothes I own cost 20 dollars,
most expensive devices I own cost 200 dollars.
Born to a factory worker, I never knew luxury,
then I made me a name, but saw the world’s condition,
I grew an absolute repulsion to lifestyle luxurious.

The question is not, how much can I enjoy,
but how much can I endure to lift up the world!
Life’s meaning comes not from what we gain for
ourselves, but from what we give up for others.

I’m existentially allergic to opulence,
every soft bed feels like a betrayal –
expensive meals scream of starving children,
dollar spent on luxury is a dollar animal.

The average colored person is ten times
smarter, wiser, braver, and stronger,
than most white people, not because
we are genetically superior,

but because, when an entire planet
is rigged in favor of white colonials
over the black, the brown, the latino,
arab, indian, chinese, turk, and what not,
we have to be exceptional to survive.

White people can be mediocre,
and still respected, glorified even,
but rest of us have to be Ramanujans,
Rumis, Naskars, just to be regarded as human.

Most of the world’s geniuses are non-whites,
not because it’s genetic, but because, like
white people inherit blonde hair and blue eyes,
or daddy’s emeralds, we inherit generational
persecution, and any brain forced to endure
persecution as daily chore, becomes a powerhouse
of apparently supernatural mental faculties.

When the whites benefit from privilege,
it’s part and parcel of colonial heritage,
but when a giant rises from the marginals,
it eclipses the shallow heights of whiteness.

I’m colored, I’m scientist,
I’m poet, I’m polyglot –
coming from zero money,
I won the world with words.

Try and get your puny white brains
around this existence enigma –
compile your white canons of a century,
and they turn bleak next to just one year
of multicultural, multidisciplinary Naskar.

I never grovelled to be included,
I let my vastness out,
and the world queues for my grace.

If a 3 pound brain can contain
a 100 billion nerve cells,
a planet with land the size of 20bn stadiums
should have room for 10 billion people.

Then how come, so many
have to survive on so little,
on a planet this size, this rich!

It all comes down to hoarding – if we
cared more about social responsibility
than social etiquette, we wouldn’t have
such drastic paradoxes of disparity.

In English we say:
proof of the pudding is in the eating.
In Naskarian we say:
proof of the Sapiens is in the sharing.