--Man--

You feel the hunger raging through you. Raging through each and every part of you. Through your writhing gut. Through your hollow chest. Through your sore and decaying arms and legs. Through your dry, parched throat. Through your throbbing head. Through your aching kidneys. Everywhere. 

You feel the heat melting you, burning you, boiling you from the inside out. Your head aches dully and gratingly because of it. You feel as if all your insides have melted and turned to soup. You feel as if your skin is burning under the hot, unrelenting sun. 

You are sick, and every once in a while you cough wheezing into your naked elbow. You don't remember the last time when you were not sick. It's as if sickness follows you everywhere you go like a twisted and corrupted shadow. It's as if you can never get free. And your wrenched out soul can never get free. 

But you are free. Far more free than most of the people in this aching, dying city. In this city that is so supersaturated with misery that everyone and everything is drowning in it. Everyone and everything that matters at least. 

You do not know how so much agony and aching misery can be crammed together into so small a space. You do not know how all the tall, tall buildings and dusty, dusty roads do not contort themselves and collapse into piles of ruined steel and bricks. 

You feel like the whole city is a giant pile of rubble anyways. Because you are war torn. All your friends are war torn. The family you left behind for their own good is war torn. More people than you could ever possibly meet in your life are all war torn. And there isn't even a war going on. Not literally anyways. 

You are thirsty, and that makes you even hotter. Your throat burns dry. Your arms and legs feel heavy, lethargic, slightly itchy, dried out. Your lungs burn, your eyes burn, everything about you burns and you have no idea how you are still clinging to life. 

But clinging to life is what you have to do. Because even though death would be a panacea, would be calm and cool and comforting, you are too much of a coward to accept death. You have friends and they rely on you and you can't bear to leave them behind. Even though you know they would want you to be free. 

You are such a coward. Such a coward. Such a coward. Even when you are brave. Even when you share what little coin you are able to gather with those who have not been able to gather any coin that day. Even when you share what meagre food scraps you've been given with those who have not had food that day. 

You have nowhere to go. Nowhere to go but for the dusty, dirty streets filled with festering water and crumpled garbage. You have nothing that is yours. Nothing except for the pain and the ache coming from so many different sources. Nothing except the hunger which echoes through all of you all of the time. You have nothing except your misery, and your agony, and your hurt. 

But that is not true. You have your friends. Friends who share what tiny little they have with you. You have your comrades, who all join the throngs of desperate beggars every single day, trying to pry what little they can from the rich. You have your people. People you have met and people you have never met. People you will meet and people you will never meet. You have them. You have the connections and the bonds that tie your heart to theirs. You have love. 

Sometimes it feels like the love is burning through inside you like sparkling gold. And it is the only thing that is giving you hope, keeping you whole, keeping you supported, keeping you human. To love is to be human. To love is the only way to be human. Society had taken almost everything from you but it could not take your love. It could not take your humanity. 

You are one human in a throng of so many other humans. One beating heart amidst so many other beating hearts. One of many. One part of a whole. And when all your people come together as a whole, all the beggars and the factory workers and the rickshaw pullers and the miners and the farmers and the construction workers and the servants, when all the people come together in their hearts, that is when you feel whole. That is when you feel human. 

You sleep on the streets. All your fellow beggars sleep on the streets. It is horrifically dangerous. There are criminal gangs that are out to steal whatever they can, even organs, even whole people. There are police officers who take whatever they want from your people and beat you guys whenever they feel like it. Full of hatred and full of malice. There are dogs that are rabid and may bite you. Cats that are much the same. 

But still, you sleep on the streets, on the hard ground and the dust, in the cold night air, because you don't have anywhere else to sleep. You don't have a pillow so you use a bundled-up wad of cloth that you drape over your shoulders in the daytime. You huddle with other street urchins for warmth. 

Most of your days are spent pressed together with the crowd, hurting, hungry, begging for scraps from the middle class people in their cars that drive by. Most of your day is spent looking into the eyes of those who do not meet your eyes, do not see your eyes, do not care about your eyes. Most of your day is spent asking for mercy from people who give you none, people who give you nothing. 

But it almost feels good to be pressed up against the hungry, aching bodies of all the other human beings who are begging as you are. It's a strange sort of solidarity. You all standing together. You all hurting together. You all aching together. You all pleading together. No matter what, you have your people. And they are fighting the same fight you are. You are all fighting together. 

Often it feels as if you are more dead than alive. As if much of your soul has already drifted up into the afterlife, into a kaleidoscopic whirl of emotions that are not meant for this life, not meant for this world. You sometimes feel like you are floating up to the sky just as much as you are tethered down on the ground. And it almost feels good. It almost feels like victory. 

You know that you will die soon. People living on the streets never live long. Your lives are really just a slow spiral into death. And you grieve yourself. You are thirty-five and already you grieve yourself. And you grieve your friends and comrades. Those who are still alive and those who have passed on. Both the same. Both equally. 

You feel so much misery over the fact that your friends have to live the same life you do. Over the fact that they have to hurt just as you do. That they have to hurt just as much as you. You think that it probably hurts you more, the fact that they're hurting, than it does the fact that you are hurting. You would do anything to see them safe, see them healthy, see them happy. But you cannot do anything. It's all out of your hands. 

Everything is out of your hands. Your life is out of your hands. Your death is out of your hands. Your loved ones' lives are out of your hands. Their happiness is out of your hands. Their deaths are out of your hands. The swirling hurricane of emotions that constantly batter at your weary soul is out of your hands. 

Weary. You are so weary. Your bones are weary, your blood is weary, your flesh is weary, your skin is weary. Your mind is weary, your heart is weary, your soul is weary. Yet at the same time, they are all so energized. They are sparking with this aching, acidic energy that is almost enough to keep you going. Almost. 

You breathe. And your breaths feel jagged. Ragged. Ragged just like your clothes are. Ragged just like your hair is. Ragged just like your soul. You feel as if you have no dignity left. But that's not true. You do have some dignity left. Things could be worse. 

Things could be so much worse. 

But still, desperation paints all you know. An aching sort of desperation. A ravenous sort of desperation. The sort of desperation that is like a caged lion roaring, like a never ending cave full of stalactites and stalagmites. Like the depths of the ocean or the fire of the sun. The type of desperation that you are so desperate to be rid of. The type of desperation that you know you will never be rid of. Not until the day that you finally, finally succumb to the death that is always trailing close behind you. 

You are at the moment standing in a crowd full of people. You are all pressed against each other. You all pressed desperately together. You are all standing there together and that gives you a sort of strength. Gives you a form of power. 

But truly you don't have any power as you press towards the car, asking again and again achingly for the passengers within to spare you some coin, spare you some food, spare you some mercy, spare you some life. You and the rest of the crowd melt together to form one desperate, weary, hollow voice. A voice that begs again and again for some type of help. For some type of kindness. For some type of peace. 

You think of what a pathetic scene you must be painting for those on the inside of the car. All of you together, looking with your hollow, aching eyes and pleading with your tired, weary throats and stretching your hands out towards them. You think of how small they must see you as. And you feel small. You feel so small. 

But at the same time, along with all your people surrounding you, standing in a mass with all of them, you feel supported. You feel as if you can stand tall. 

Both these feelings constantly eat inside of you. And the battle leaves you bloody. 

Inside the car is a world you will never know. It's a world of coolness and freshness and soft, plush seats. It's a world of decadence and comfort. It's a world where there's always enough, where there is more than enough, where there are no cares and no worries, nothing but the constant knowledge that you will be well provided for. 

You can't imagine what that must feel like. Even the thought of it is alien to you. It's strange and otherworldly. You don't think that the world inside the car could possibly be real. 

But it is real. It is standing squat right there in front of you. Just as it stands right there in front of you each time a new car comes along and gets stuck in the traffic of this intersection. Each time you have to beg for whatever meagre scraps you can get. 

Inside the car there are five people. 

A driver, whose eyes you meet, whose eyes look as sad as your own, if not sadder. A driver whose eyes look aching and hollow. And within that aching hollowness you can see your own aching hollowness reflected back. His shoulders curl in just a little bit. Just barely enough for it to be noticeable. And you can see it in his face that he wants to help you, he longs to help you, but he can't. You understand him. You forgive him. 

Sitting beside the driver is a young woman of perhaps twenty-five years of age. She is wearing a bright floral salwar with a georgette scarf. Her hair looks as if it has been straightened. Her eyes are haughty and cold and conceited. She looks through you, almost as if she doesn't see you at all. As if she couldn't care less. As if she has her own world to think about. You don't forgive her, and you don't understand. You don't understand how people people could be so apathetic, so cruel. 

The third person in the car, sitting in the back seat, is a woman of perhaps thirty-five years of age. She is wearing earring made of pearl and she is looking straight ahead. Her eyes are hard and cold, sharp and cruel. She stares down her nose at you all outside. She almost glares, and you can tell that there is a strict, severe sort of hatred in her heart. You don't understand her either, and you know that you could never forgive her. Not after she did all that she did. 

You look at the child on her lap. A baby of less than one year old. The young child is playing with a set of plastic keys. But he stops in order to look at you. To look at all of you. There is something searching, something sad in his large, babyish, dark eyes. His lips are pinched in an adorable sort of solemnity. You can tell that he is sad. Even though you can tell that he doesn't understand anything, you can tell that he is sad, you wish that the baby could grow up somewhere better than this hellhole of a city. You hope that he can grow up with people better than these soulless women. 

The last person in the car, sitting in the plush seat facing you, is a little girl of school age. She has on a new dress and short dark hair that curls prettily. She is staring. In her expression there is something haunted, something touched, something screaming. You feel as if maybe, just maybe, she will get it one day. She will get how much you're hurting. How much your people are hurting. But you know that she doesn't understand now. No matter how haunted she might be, no matter how sorrowvfull and disturbed her expression, you know that she in her new dress and shiny curls understands nothing. And you understand nothing about her as well. Nothing about her world. But you forgive her, and you hope that that forgiveness is not misplaced. You have a feeling that it might be. 

Outside the sun flares down hotly on your skin. It makes you feel sluggish and grated and dead inside. Your hunger courses through you, like hot acidic fire pouring over your insides. Your thirst burns your airways and your sickness leaves you wishing you could curl up and lie down somewhere. 

But you can't. You can't. You need money for food and water, and money is the only thing that buys life. You need life. You don't want life. But you find yourself clinging to it nonetheless. 

You can feel the pain of all the folk all around you, as if it is your own pain. All of all of your collective pain comes together and mingles with each other to form an ocean of violence that batters against all of you, that drowns all of your souls. It's a horrible type of solidarity. A beautiful type of solidarity. 

You can feel death haunting all of you. Standing close behind your forms. Looking, silently, at your pleading and your desperation. You oh so desperately try to ward death away. You ask again and again, along with the crowd, for some meagre coins.