A different perspective

I wake up at 5 in the morning - there's no alarm clock to do it, but i must wake up early if I wish to live. Go out and do the morning chores before the sunlight arrives - because i stay in the desert and there is no place other than the bushes to give me and my wife some privacy in some of life's most mundane tasks. Then she walks 5 kms to the place where the water tanker unloads. In the meanwhile, I start the pump with much efforts and diesel costlier than my blood starts pumping water onto my field some time later...

I walk all day on the salty land, amidst salty water, barefooted - because the rubber boots my wife made out of some tires could not give me the strength I needed to do my job. I work all morning- while my younger kids wake up and wait for the school to start. They stare intently in one direction - at a hut 6 kms away, covered with some plastic and tin shelters. A small flicker of mirrors by the teachers tells them its time to come to school now - and they joyously signal back with our broken mirror. They hop to school along the desert mud, joyously because the school has some toys, some friends and food to eat. My older kids work with me in the water now. We work till the sun above our heads starts to burn the scalp and the skin, I get out of the water only to see my leg shrinking further. My joints ache when I sit down for a meal, but I put on a brave smile - they say there will be some students from some well known management college in Ahmedabad here to study us today ... Maybe they can do something to explain why my life is so...