They Have The Right To Dream Poem by Venkatesh Raghava

Synonymous with endless struggle for the bare minimum,
Their mornings begin with scraping the dust bins,
They are human scavengers;
Our waste is their fruits of labour.
Covered with rags, trying to fight cold,
They are sitting near a dust bin.
They swallow their own pain,
And screams because there is nobody to hear them.
Smeared with dust and dirt, the foot path is their home,
While we are cocooned inside concrete structures.
It is not rag pickers crime that they are born poor,
Although we deny them the right even to dream about the fineries of life,
So strangely enough, there is an unsettling serenity on there face,
While sleeping on the foot path, since they have also got the right to dream.