Creativity Counts No Coins

We don’t always talk of poverty and creativity in the same breath. The two might be poles apart, but if being poor means anything, it is being innovative, resourceful and ingenious.

Recently, we visited a conspicuous slum area in the Indian capital Delhi, and we were eager to talk to the residents and peek into their creative vision. We were fascinated by the way each house had the dweller’s name written on it in a crazy handwriting. As the slum children greeted us in all their cheer, the happiness reflected on their faces was a moving sight indeed.

These children live in the ghettos we are scared to even enter. Never mind the dilapidated dwellings amidst pools of sewage, never mind the frugal meals of hardened leftover rice and watery daal, never mind the harrowing poverty or the lack of education, never mind the foetid and disease-ridden living conditions – for them, life’s colossal challenge also brings to them real joy in living dangerously, with almost nothing.