The King is Naked!
Meidan Baazar, Tbilisi
The imposing
sculpture of Mother of Georgians towers above the Sololaki Hills. Tourists
ride the rope-way car to come here for a panoramic view of the city, and for
photo-clicks.
Meidan Bazar
at the foothills is full of Souvenir shops, and busy eateries. Subway
and Dunkin Donuts, capitalist cousins in a curious competitive and
collaborative duet, share an outlet packed with happy, noisy diners. Both doing
brisk biz. Outside on the pavement sits a visually-challenged old lady softly
clattering the coin-bowl in hand, the faint jangle drowned in the din of the
touristy bazaar.
Two
different mothers, they could belong to different species! Mother of proud
Georgians - Mother Sculpture on the Hill with a sword in one hand, and a
wine-bowl in the other; the old lady on the pavement with a coin-bowl in hand.
The
transparent glass-door of the restaurant, mopped periodically by the hour-rated
part-time worker to remove the smudges; separates the perpetually-hungry and
the rarely-hungry.
Marriott Baku Boulevard
Guests have paid
for a Bed-n-Breakfast room, and happily begin their day with a leisurely, sumptuous
breakfast selecting their favourite dishes from yards and yards of enticing
food – breads, waffles, pastries, cornflakes, salads, nuts, fruits – cut and
whole, a selection of cheeses, olives, fresh juices, cokes, scrambled eggs (you
may order for omelettes with cheese and mushroom from the ‘hot’ counter), sausages;
for the large group of Indian tourists - chole-bhature, parathas, pickles, suji ka
halwa; and for the Asian tourists – fish, sauteed and stewed vegetables, mushrooms
in hot garlic sauce, rice, and noodles; a lavish spread that would satisfy the
taste-buds of the most demanding guests.
A tourist
couple came down for breakfast a bit late and found all the seats in the
restaurant taken, not unusual at the peak hour. A helpful waiter suggested they
could enjoy their breakfast in the garden overlooking the boulevard which garlanded
the beautiful Caspian Sea. Most pleasant weather to sit outside, he assured.
The smoking
area which doubled up as additional dining space was indeed beautiful. The air
was salubrious except when a gust of wind from the lake doused with smell of
oil hit the nose.
The curse of
plenty. Azerbaijan is an oil-rich country. Caspian Sea Boulevard at Baku is
stunningly beautiful from a little distance, or in a photo; but if you get too
near the water, you can see blue-green oil patches floating. No wonder, the
water birds have gone elsewhere.
The couple
finished their breakfast, and a few friends brought their coffee out to chat
with them.
Let’s click
a few photos, said the gentleman. A friend offered to click the photo.
‘No, Hamid
will do it,’ he said, and beckoned the lone waiter, possibly an intern not yet
experienced enough to wait upon the customers inside the restaurant, but good
enough for the few smokers and laggard diners.
About 18,
less than five feet tall, and with a charming smile; he was happy to click the
guests.
How do you
know his name, the friend asked?
‘When we sat
down for breakfast, I saw this boy clearing the plates of the other table at a
distance, and when he reached the garbage bin, before dumping the stuff, he
picked up something from the plate and quickly put it into his mouth.
To avoid
embarrassing him, I called him after a while, asked for his name, and
discreetly pushed a five-Manat currency note (INR 250) into his palm which he
accepted with a little bow and a grateful smile. He is from the rural area, and
is studying to be a dentist.’
Inside the
restaurant, yards and yards of food; in the manicured garden, hunger stalks
unseen; a little glass-door separates the over-fed and the under-fed.
Times Square, New York
The dazzling
centre of the City that Never Sleeps; where enthusiastic crowds cheer while the
spectacular Ball descends at 12:00 hrs on 31 December to herald the New Year.
Most people
are on the move, not for a leisurely stroll, but to reach somewhere-else real-quick.
Coffee in hand, a fag on lips, but in a tearing hurry.
The
middle-aged executive in a dark business suit, bites into his footlong, regrets
his choice of sauce, and dumps it in the garbage can, in a fluid movement as
though flicking a speck of ash from his cuff. Before he is past the bend,
another man passes by the can, deftly picks up the still-warm packet, and gets
on his way.
United States-
per capita GDP: $78,422
Rome, July 2023
The UN Food
Systems Summit +2 Stocktaking Moment took place in Rome, Italy, from 24 to 26
July 2023. The event aimed to review progress since the 2021 Food Systems
Summit and address ongoing challenges in transforming global food systems.
Over 2,000
participants from 180 countries attended, including more than 20 Heads of State
and Government and 125 Ministers.
How much food and beverages did the
delegates consume? How much was spent on this Summit? How many malnourished
children could have been supported with these funds?
An unbridgeable gap between the
hungry, and those discussing hunger!
A Lavish Banquet
A mega-wedding was celebrated in July
2023 with the Who’s Who of the world gracing the occasion. Several of these
celebrities flew in their own personal jets.
How could these honoured guests not
be looked after well in the country where a Guest is God: Atithi Devo Bhava?
How much did it cost to feed these over-fed
people? Could it have fed the hungry instead?
A yawning gap between the overfed and
the undernourished!
At Traffic-light
A traffic light at a busy crossing in
a metro-city. Peak-hour wait – 90 seconds. A gleaming black Mercedes waits
impatiently. A hungry kid taps the window on the driver’s side patiently –
once, twice, thrice.
Why do they breed like rabbits if
they can’t even feed the kids? Why are people still hungry when the sarkar
spends thousands of crores on food subsidy? Ma’am, getting a little late for
her kitty-lunch, mutters under her breath.
The chauffeur is reminded of Dushyant
Kumar’s unforgettable couplet:
यहाँ तक आते आते सूख जाती
है कई नदियाँ
मुझे मालूम है पानी कहाँ
ठहरा हुआ होगा
He knows Ma’am no longer handles cash,
swiftly lowers the window pane, and gives the kid a five-rupee coin.
A sheet of transparent, toughened
glass separates the always-hungry, and the never-hungry.
The king is naked!
Capitalism dons
a resplendent magic dress and marches proudly all over the globe, but
there is no child to tell, ‘Look, the king is naked!’
Hunger Facts
· In our world of about 8 billion
people, 700 million people go hungry every day.
· Hunger remains serious or alarming in
43 countries. Little progress is evident vis-à-vis the situation in 2015. (Global
Hunger Index Report 2023)
· Food insecurity is a significant
issue even in affluent countries. Here are some estimates for the number of
food-insecure people in some of the world’s wealthiest nations: US- 34 mn,
Canada – 5.8 mn, Germany – 6.5 mn, France – 5.5 mn, Australia – 4 mn, Japan –
7.5 mn.
· An estimated 23% of American college
students (about 3.8 million) experienced food insecurity in 2020.
· As per recent reports, over 33 lakh
children in India are malnourished, with more than half of them being severely
malnourished. India runs the largest nutrition-support programme in the world,
but malnourishment of children remains a significant challenge.
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