My Home My Heart (painted poem)

With money you can buy houses,

but money cannot by for you a home.

Image and Poem by Remigius de Souza

House is where the Home is;
Home is where the Heart is.

Squatters in Mumbai: Displaced and Marginalized

(Image: Shelter for the bus passengers / Shelter for the Displaced in Mumbai: Contradiction in Mumbai's Urban Design.
Bus shelter is built in stainless steel: a sexy designer product!
Both together symbolize India's Development Planning, and exposes its hypocrisy.)
 

Whenever I walk down-to-earth in Mumbai I notice 65 million people live in the slums and squatters, struggle for their daily bread.
It is their Daily Prayer in Action to Life. They aren't activist like the elite; they are vacationist without duplicity, and without words.

It seems their number is daily rising defying the official statistics:
Just like the rising national GDP of India;
just like rising Stock Exchange indexes in the money market;
just like rising numbers of skyscrapers rising higher and higher on Mumbai's skyline;
just like rising number of vacant blocks of houses awaiting higher returns of their investments.
It seems all these have lost their heart and home, both, in the money market, though the squatters on the street-side!

The reason to notice them is simple: Once I practiced as architect-planner; once I was a teacher; once I was landless teen age farm labourer; once I too was a displaced and marginalized person. Only I had opportunity for formal education in time.
All these people have come from many regions of India. They come from the places wherever Mumbai has left its footprint. The rulers of India must not ignore this fact. The capitalist – Indian and foreigners – who have settled in Mumbai are capable enough to buy over all of them, but where they can get educated slaves why should they care?
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NOTE: Recent news "2.25 million homes empty, people still homeless in state" Mumbai, Hindustan Times, September 23, 2012 Page 1. 
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© Remigius de Souza. All rights reserved.