Conquering Poverty

For someone who had always had everything he needed, even if he had to work hard for it, imagining how it is like to be poor in the real sense of the word would be very difficult. It requires one to experience getting on in an empty stomach to know how it’s like not to have a roof over one’s head, or to send your kids to sleep without supper. Seeing emptiness on the eyes of people whose only possession is ‘nothing’ would never be enough to comprehend the desperation and the self-pity that set in in them who subsist on almost nothing.

I’ve been poor myself. No, not the kind of poor that required me to walk on streets to beg for alms, but I’ve experienced not eating three square meals a day. And I tell you, it was so hard, it brings tears to my eyes just thinking about the things my family and I had to go through.

My parents are hard working. And I know for a fact that they started our family okay. But a series of wrong decisions and some misfortunes brought the whole family to its knees, long before my brothers and I were old enough to remember how it was like to be born to a family with a thriving small-scale RTW business. As long as I remember, we had always been poor. I remember, Dad had had to divide our food equally so we all would have enough to eat. I still couldn’t fathom what kind of magic he and Mom must have exercised that they were able to feed the whole family on a regular-sized-fish meal, or a three-egg breakfast for a family of six.

Yes, we were poor, but we were doing fine. Until everything went further downhill.

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