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POVERTY'S PUNISHMENT

Poverty's punishment

 It is  indeed an alliteration of 'Ps'
Because  poverty punishes with impunity
And though i didn't commit any punishable crime


My first cry  at the labour ward
 was at the crack of poverty's  cruel whip

Did i say labour ward?

Forgive me , but it was at home,
In a thatch roofed mud hut which buzzed
with mosquitoes at night

Because poverty  the ruthless tyrant
dictated to my parents where i was to be born

Home ! , he ordered
Not hospital

No wonder i ended up an epitome of all these disorders :Rickets,kwashiokor, night blindness and stunted growth

Now i know that the simplest cure to all these was to have been born in a common 'hospital'
But poverty denied me this  'cheap' cure


He fractured my femur
and gave me that horrible gait,which pays me with rejection no matter how hard i chase acceptance

He stole all my food and drove me to retarded growth and diseases

Worst of all he separated 'them'
Using the his subtil combination
Of lust and greed
He left me with no one to protect me
Or teach me any creed


This spells in an "atom's shell" how wickedly poverty dealt with me


But one day the  great punisher
gave a strange order

"Off to the palace with that brat!",
he blurted,
"And teach him the ways of kings and nobles."

With mixed feelings i wondered

Is this a miracle from God,or poverty mocking me further?

The bitter answer i learnt later

So I enrolled  as a 'palace student'
As clueless as a Soldier who goes to war
To fight an enemy  from an alien planet

All the horrors of war were unleashed upon me : pain,hunger, and rejection

Rejection ,yes
for who in their right minds will entrust their life to one who can barely protect his own

Tell me ,who?

They were not to blame for rejecting me

No, it was merely a survival instinct

I fought the 'palace war' and barely escaped with my life
God must have 'cheated' poverty in my favor in that particular war
For poverty programmed me to fail from day one
But the program got corrupted by day six


But  poverty  the great tyrant
Had planned it all
At the nadir of my life
When i thought i had escaped
His shackles and  all
He showed me that one can even
Be rejected for not being tall
So he fabricated it from my infancy
 all along

In my excitement of winning the war i forgot

But the one who cheated poverty once promises to cheat him again
And i cant wait to see the look on his face
When he realises that all his evil plans
Were part of God's plan all along


He planned it all for my victory

E.Y.






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