Breathe.
Now, hold your breath and read.
We humans are INHUMAN.
Breathe.(for you have the privilege to)
Once again, hold your breathe and read.
“As many as 339 people have died
while cleaning sewers and septic tanks in India”
They’ve been used, they are being fed lies.
The ones responsible...
for contracting manual scavengers
are committing a crime.
Celebrate their sacrifices,
like you do of the soldiers on the frontline.
No one told them, loss of memory,
tuberculosis, facial flushing, a headache and
nausea is on it’s way.
To sever their only ties, with life
and the chance to be within the socialites.
Behold.
Deep down, in the sewers we have polluted,
goes on a battle, untold. These heroes don’t have a destined happy ending.
This community of the privileged,
(privileged, the ones who are not manual scavengers)
kind enough to draw the line,
excluding the sanitation workers,
“they’re too dirty to be kept close.”
But, dirty is the community’s mind.
Their internalised flippancy..
is the greatest stink one could hold.
Where soldiers’ families are showered/provided with cash,
scavengers don’t get a dime.
Are manual scavengers, not the nations sons?
They’ve sacrificed their lives!
(so that your dirty human excreta
would reach the oceans on time)
One is being paid for inhaling methane,
and the other is not?
How is this just?
How are you living your life?