By Ellerine Diengdoh
I must confess that it took me a long time to write this down, overwhelmed as I was by many emotions….chief among them, a deep and profound shame. Shame because for a people so proud of our words, we have become blind to their meaning. “Tip Briew, Tip Blei,” we declare—to know Man is to know God. We boast of “ka jaitbynriew ba tylli” a unified people, a singular body. We claim the mantle of a Christian state, a community built on compassion, on love, on brotherhood. But I ask you to look away from the high chair of comfort, from the podiums of pontification, and to look down, at the pavement. For it is there, on the cracked and grimy concrete, that our proud words ring hollow. It is there that our boasted unity is revealed as a myth. It is there that our faith is tested, and it is there that our humanity is laid bare. This, then, is why I write. To speak to our collective conscience, in the hope that a heart still beats there.
I wonder what it feels like to be a human splinter. To exist as an inconvenience, like a stain on a Shillong’s pristine collar. To be a piece of gravel the world wants to sweep into the gutter.
From inside a car, with the windows up and the AC on, you just see a blob, a splash of colour that’s blocking your way. But get out of the car. Stand on the pavement and breathe what they breathe. Go on. Let the fumes and dust coat your tongue. Let the city’s angry curse, a chorus of relentless horns, wash over you. This is the only song they hear. This is the soundtrack to their life.
Now look at her. No, really look. Over there…. a woman, fused to a tiny plastic stool, one that looks as sad, as tired, as worn-out as she does. Her back is bent into a question mark, from holding up a sky of indifference since morning. The sun has been screaming at her all day, and now the dark clouds are threatening to cry on her. She is marooned on a tiny island of pineapples…..each one a spiky hope against despair.
She has learnt the art of not being looked at. She has become an expert at being ignored. While her whole body is screaming, “Please, just buy, just buy!” her face wears a smile, because you can’t look desperate. People don’t like desperation. It is ugly!
Her shop has no walls, no roof, no door. Her shop is a sheet of plastic on the cold, hard ground. Breathe it with her, the grimy film that settles on the mouth and the teeth. It is the residue of the black cough of a bus, the stench of burnt rubber from bikes and scooties. This is not just her air. This is the only air she is allowed to breathe.
A sea of legs and shoes flows around her, a relentless human tide that barely registers her existence. For a fleeting second, a face will tighten, a mouth will purse. It is the flinch of irritation….the ugly, silent grammar of a world that sees her not as a woman, but as a nuisance, a menace, a delay.
What separates her from us, is a line. The line is the edge of the pavement. It is only inches of concrete, but it is worlds apart. It is the distance between worrying about traffic, and praying the rain holds off long enough to sell one more pineapple….just one….so your child can eat tonight.
This isn’t a career choice……this pavement, this tiny two-foot square of dust and dirt, is the entire plan. This is the only choice, this is the raw, bleeding edge of what’s left, laid out on a dirty sheet of plastic. This is the human mess that spills onto the street because there’s no room for it anywhere else.
However, in homes and rooms far from the streets, in clean, comfortable worlds, people with soft hands and clean words, talk about ” vending zones,” “rehabilitation,” “beautification”…..words that mean nothing on the pavement. You cannot tidy up hunger, you cannot rehabilitate desperation, you cannot sweep a human soul under a rug of civic pride.
“They” are not a problem, “they” are proof…….proof that you can shove a person into the gutter, and they will claw a life out of the dirt. Humanity is a weed, it will grow between the cracks of the pavement, because all it needs is just a little light….
Imagine it. To be a problem just by taking up space. To have the entire, brutal, beautiful, messy fact of your fight for life dismissed with a sigh. To be an inconvenience.
Once you truly imagine what it feels like to be an inconvenience, you realise the question isn’t, “Why are they in my way?”
Ask the other one, the one that hurts, the one that should keep you awake at night.
Ask, “Why is the pavement the only place that’s left for them to be?