‘Rootless’ refers to the poor and wretched fellow living in a slum or on the street. Driven by poverty, they come to the cities in search of food to fight for survival. In the cities they reside wherever they can in the payments, in the bus and rail stations, along the rail lines, in the low-lying areas, on the river embankments, near the garbage dumping sites and also in the vicinity of large residential areas building makeshift houses using plastic sheets, bamboo, papers, talpata or golpata whatever they can gather. The male members work as market bearers, construction workers, factory workers, rickshaw pullers, street hawkers while the female ones work in residential houses, in construction sites, in the garment factories. I feel pity for them. Sometimes they get involved in anti-social activities. They do it in order to survive in this very world. The children devoid of their parents become rootless. They are deprived of their basic needs. We should feel pity for them and try to rehabilitate them in suitable places. None should look down upon them. The rich and the government should provide the rootless with suitable employment opportunities so that they can live modestly and honestly.
The Rootless
