A Poor Person Will Never Be Sick
- Madhukar Dama
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
To say a poor person will never be sick is not to deny the reality of disease.
Sickness exists.
Bodies break down.
Accidents happen.
But when we speak of the poor, the meaning is deeper.
If a poor person truly knows he is poor, then his awareness, his responsibility, and his discipline will never allow sickness to overtake his life.
For the poor, health is not a luxury.
It is survival.
Their poverty demands clarity.
Their poverty demands strength.
And so, the aware poor will never be sick.
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The Rich Can Afford Sickness
The rich can fall sick without fear.
They can lie in bed for weeks, visit hospitals, take endless tests, try every treatment, and still keep life running.
Their income continues.
Their children still eat.
Their homes still function.
For them, sickness is an inconvenience, not a collapse.
They can afford to treat sickness as an event.
The poor cannot.
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The Poor Know Their Poverty
A poor person, if he knows he is poor, carries a sharp awareness:
If I miss one day of work, there is no food.
If I lie in bed, my family suffers.
If I waste money on hospitals, I fall into debt.
If I become dependent, my poverty turns into slavery.
This awareness protects him.
It keeps him from neglect.
It forces him to eat simply, avoid unnecessary risks, resist addictions, and hold discipline.
He will never be sick—not because illness cannot touch him, but because his clarity refuses to give sickness a chance.
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Daily-Wage Workers
Think of a mason in a city.
His daily wage is the only income.
If he falls sick for three days, the house goes without food.
If he enters a hospital, the contractor gives his place to another.
Even if the government pays his hospital bill, who will pay for the groceries?
Who will pay the rent?
An aware poor worker knows this truth.
He will never be sick, because he knows his entire home stands on his shoulders.
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Migrant Workers
A migrant from Bihar or Odisha working in Delhi cannot afford weakness.
If he stops, the money flow to his family stops.
His parents, wife, and children at home depend entirely on him.
If he becomes sick repeatedly, it only means he has forgotten his poverty, that he has been misled into believing someone else will carry his burden.
The aware migrant worker knows the truth.
He will never be sick.
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Farmers
For farmers, sickness during sowing or harvest is not allowed.
Crops will not wait for his recovery.
If he collapses, the field collapses.
If the field collapses, debt follows.
Debt means losing land, animals, and dignity.
An aware farmer knows this chain.
He cannot let sickness enter.
He will never be sick.
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Street Vendors and Small Traders
A woman selling vegetables or a man pulling a rickshaw cannot shut shop for a week.
A tea-stall owner cannot stop boiling water because of fever.
Customers vanish quickly.
Absence destroys their fragile income.
So they protect themselves.
They stay strong.
They will never be sick.
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Women and the Household
If poverty is hard for men, it is harsher for women.
A poor woman holds the household together.
She cooks, cleans, fetches water, manages children, tends to animals, and often works outside too.
If she falls sick, no one replaces her.
The hospital cannot cook food.
The government cannot wash clothes. Insurance cannot comfort a crying child. Her body is the center of the home.
She knows this.
Even in fever, she cooks.
Even in pain, she bends.
Even in weakness, she carries.
For her, sickness is impossible.
She will never be sick—because her family’s survival will not allow it.
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The Illusion of Government Care
Governments have brainwashed the poor with promises: We will take care of you.
Insurance cards, free hospitals, health schemes.
These create false confidence.
But the truth is simple:
A free hospital cannot replace lost wages.
A free bed cannot cook food for children.
An insurance card cannot carry a family’s daily needs.
If a poor person believes these illusions, he becomes careless.
He falls into addictions, wastes his body, eats without thought, and leans on hospitals.
But the aware poor know: governments cannot carry them.
Only awareness can.
And so, they will never be sick.
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Awareness as Real Medicine
For the poor, real medicine is not in tablets or schemes.
Real medicine is awareness.
Awareness of their poverty.
Awareness of their responsibility. Awareness that no one else can carry their daily burden.
An aware poor person guards his health, because he knows that once it breaks, nothing can save him.
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The Universal Lesson
Though poverty shows this most sharply, the truth is universal.
Even the rich cannot endlessly outsource their health.
Wealth can buy treatment, but not a new body.
Hospitals can repair, but not rebuild life.
The poor simply see it more clearly: if I fall, everything falls.
That clarity itself is protection.
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Final Message
A poor person will never be sick.
Not because he is immune.
Not because he has special strength.
But because his poverty teaches him:
Health is survival.
Discipline is non-negotiable.
Responsibility cannot be transferred.
If he remembers this truth, he will never be sick.
If he forgets it, he will suffer—not from poverty, but from lack of awareness.
The aware poor will never be sick.
And in that truth lies a lesson for everyone.
You Cannot Be Sick When Hunger Waits
because he can’t.
because there’s no space for it.
because fever means no bread,
a cough means no roof,
a broken back means hunger gnawing
at the children’s bellies like rats in the dark.
the rich?
they can be sick.
they can lie in beds
with tubes, scans, air-conditioning.
their machines beep.
their money flows even when they don’t.
they can call it rest.
they can call it recovery.
they can even call it “wellness.”
but the poor?
if you’re aware of your poverty,
if you’ve counted coins at dawn
and realized half your life depends
on walking to the worksite today,
then you know:
you will never be sick.
you chew your food slow,
not because you are enlightened,
but because you know
you can’t afford an ulcer.
you skip the cheap liquor
because you know
you can’t afford to fall.
you wake up before the sun,
not because you read some productivity book,
but because the farm, the field,
the boss with the register
isn’t going to wait for your headache.
a poor woman—
she knows this deeper.
her sickness would mean
no one lights the stove,
no one washes the shirts,
no one rocks the baby.
so she gets up,
with fever sweating down her spine,
with joints screaming,
with womb heavy from another child.
she walks,
cooks,
cleans,
because she knows:
she will never be sick.
migrants, too.
they walk into cities
with a sack of clothes and a name scribbled
on a slip of paper.
the train ride rattles their bones,
but sickness is not allowed.
fall sick, and the contractor
forgets you.
fall sick, and the room rent
eats you alive.
fall sick, and your village family
waits for money that never comes.
so the migrant knows:
he will never be sick.
the government whispers otherwise:
insurance cards, free wards,
posters with smiling nurses.
“we will take care of you,”
they say.
but the poor know:
the government won’t buy rice
when you miss a week of wages.
the government won’t cook lentils
when you’re in bed.
the government won’t lift your kid
and wipe his tears.
they give paper and slogans.
you give blood and sweat.
so the aware poor shrug off the posters.
they know better.
they will never be sick.
sickness is a game of the rich.
a weekend hobby.
a delayed flight.
a story for cocktail parties.
but for the poor,
sickness is betrayal,
and betrayal cannot be afforded.
awareness is medicine.
clarity is medicine.
poverty, if you really understand it,
is medicine.
so you walk steady,
you eat what is real,
you keep your body sharp,
because that’s all you have.
the aware poor will never be sick.
and if they are—
then they forgot.
they let someone else’s lie
crawl into their head.
they let hospitals and schemes
distract them from the truth.
the truth is simple:
no one carries you.
no one feeds your children
when you lie in bed.
no one takes your place in the field,
on the scaffold,
on the road,
at the stove.
so the poor will never be sick.
not because of miracle.
not because of immunity.
not because of some divine blessing.
but because they know:
falling sick is death in disguise.
awareness is survival.
discipline is breath.
clarity is bread.
the poor will never be sick,
and in that brutal truth
there is also
the most honest kind of health.
