Bare feet don’t take well to development. It burns the soles and once again they must take to walking in the forest. Roadside they walk always, as the pot holes grow deep even before the roads are finished. Bare feet, skinny limbs and arms raised above the head. Hour after hour on the way to the market to collect some 40 rupees daily. Development in the form of oppressive tractors and Jeeps pass carrying tourists to and from the wildlife preserve. That which made them refugees pushes them to the margins time and time again.
Roadside margins where they persevere.
Water wells next to crumbling houses painted with optomistic slogans of Baiga Welfare programs are filled with rotten grass and plastic bottles. This is as close as they will get to welfare. Poor burning soles that dared venture too far from the forest.
Here their neighbors will take little care.
Those cast off from the city are the lucky ones. While they can only venture through the burning brush of naked jungles once lush to collect a couple of bamboo, at least they have self-awareness. Those given nothing but the right to independence.
~*~
Roadside margins where they persevere.
Water wells next to crumbling houses painted with optomistic slogans of Baiga Welfare programs are filled with rotten grass and plastic bottles. This is as close as they will get to welfare. Poor burning soles that dared venture too far from the forest.
Here their neighbors will take little care.
Those cast off from the city are the lucky ones. While they can only venture through the burning brush of naked jungles once lush to collect a couple of bamboo, at least they have self-awareness. Those given nothing but the right to independence.
~*~