"come on in...
I've got to tell you what a state I'm in..."

Another series of self-perpetuated crimes. Another set of nameless homeless faces rubbed out. Charcoal smudges left behind. Coarse and uncouth. Marring white paper clean lives we lead. Hypocrites in glass cases.

Our buildings didn't get burnt, our children haven't stopped playing on the PSP. But our children are depraved and less living than those who left. Their smiles in a international magazine - proclaiming us the friendliest people on the planet.

Our hearts are cold and calculated. Theirs love filled and emotional... Yet they epitomise survival, we shrug and crawl into the company cocoon. Dabba wallahs... How you adore them - they made your book sell, they made your economic theories live, they made your lunch hour complete... They were once your tool now left in the shed waiting to fall apart.

Each city has a lifeline, while on other floating pieces of land that might be a steel giant or an industrial conveyer belt - ours is one of the oldest and most manipulated resource - you and me. or may be not exactly.

Those auto drivers, those street hawkers are the living face of the stream that lives behind the huge facades, the army that makes impressive buildings on power with those machine built. The same that climbs rickety bamboo and jute rope to paint your i-pod billboard.

And yes in some ways we cant live the way we do without them. The cobbler that fixes your soul when you need to work the entire day on a broken one... The boy who carried your heavy vegetables up 4 floors in your flat. The old lady who counts out the money in a "general store". Gives you two candies when she runs out of the equivalent change.

Such is my home and its loving faces are not the bastard who stole your job because his dad is clothed in white and can belt out convincing promises he doesn't keep. The love is not your posh friends who you drink with in expensive bars when you have the money only to be considered an outsider should you need help at home. The lover is not the boy who pays the bill.

It is the beach with it's children, with the old women fortune tellers, with "chat" that is made to order. It is when you are a regular customer and with a spending power of a dollar (why did i not put it in my currency?) a week.

My watchman knows my moods better than my family... and a chat with a random seat-sharer on the bus can brighten my day. People still talk to each other where I come from... Don't you miss that. This post isn't doing justice, but then neither is the world.