Was the Long Wait Worth It?

The other day I read a rather strange bit of news while sipping my morning cuppa and scrolling the news feed in Google News. 

“70-year old woman who camped the last 6 years at her protest site, dies”.

Curious, I read the entire story and remained lost in thought for quite some time after that. Not just the woman, but her husband and her son as well, had been camping at the official protest site in that busy, bustling city for a good six years. 

Their cause? Compensation of a whopping Rs 2,600 crore for 3.5 acres of ancestral land that had allegedly been acquired by the government. 

This lady – let’s call her Shanta Tai – actually died on a footpath right on a hot July afternoon outside the government building which had been her haunt for the past six years. 

Two years ago, her husband passed away in this very place.

Six years. That’s a lot of time. 

That’s a fair chunk of your life gone in pursuing a goal that may never materialize. Six years of patiently fighting for what you want, uncaring of whether you are looked down upon with pity or contempt or mocked at. Literally sacrificing the comforts of your home for a nomad’s life under the stars. 

We all know how state machineries function. Like one gigantic rusted machine, the wheels keep creaking and turning, with hundreds of nameless, faceless cogs making it spin relentlessly. 

It was a scorching hot day in July and Shanta Tai had fallen in an unresponsive heap on the footpath, under the makeshift tarpaulin-covered shack the mother-son duo had created. Panicking, her son rushed her to the nearby hospital where she was declared dead on arrival.

Were those six years worth all the hardships, the daily camping on a cold, unfeeling protest site, and then sleeping at the nearby railway station, as the milling crowds passed them as they went about their business. For the regulars, this trio (now duo) had become a common sight. But, newcomers to the area gawked at them like new curiosities in the market. 

While I admire the hardiness and persevering spirit of the old lady, it is hard to digest the fact that she actually died for nothing. 

The government just blinked and carried on with its daily business. 

Only an inconsolable son was left to carry out his warrior-mother’s last rites. 

Isn’t that how many of us give up months, years of our lives on a goal that is not just worth it? Not because it is unattainable but because other important things fall by the wayside while we are in hot pursuit of the former. 

Priorities, I guess, come into play, but the ledger needs to be balanced at the end of the day, or else, it’s a race not really well run!