Privilege cards

 I was never hungry

But I am always starving.

I was never poor.

But I am forever deprived.

What is this pain that I so desperately need?

What is this beauty of grief I can never experience?

I once deliberately went hungry.

Chose to spend the last 5 rupees in my account on a phone call instead of a vada pav

I could have borrowed money from any friend.

And I had so many of them.

I chose to make a call.

For the next 48 hrs I ate only free food.

I thought I would then understand that hunger.

That desire to rob , to stab, to steal , to have.

Never did.

I was content to eat from my friend's lunches and snack packs.

I went down to chaat shops and tried to feel my nothingness. 

Deliberately inhaled pungence of the onion at the bhelwala's cart.

Let myself salivate at the panipuriwala stall.

(The UP bhaiya's and NOT the Mumbaiyya's)

Yet, I never did feel that rock bottom.

Is this what privilege really is?

Our inability to fathom the ink of darkness, hear the pitch of a scream or 

just never ever feeling rock bottom at all?

How do you know what you don't know you have?