HOW EDUCATION MADE YOU HOMELESS?

(A brutally honest, realistic essay about the rootless modern human)

This illustration titled “HOW EDUCATION MADE YOU HOMELESS” depicts a dense urban jungle of apartment buildings, each crammed with windowed rooms where educated, well-dressed Indian men and women sit alone, disconnected, staring into laptops or blankly at walls—symbolizing isolation, dependence, and rootlessness. Despite their qualifications and attire, none own the space they inhabit. There is no greenery, no children playing, no shared community—just box after box of rented survival. The buildings stretch endlessly, reflecting the scale of mass displacement caused by the promise of education. It’s a visual tragedy of millions who left ancestral homes to gain degrees, only to become tenants in a system that rewards obedience but erases belonging.

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INTRODUCTION

You went to school for a better life. You were told that education would secure your future. That if you study well, pass exams, and get a degree, you’ll have a job, a house, and respect.

But now, you're 30, 40, maybe even 50.

You have degrees.

You have EMIs.

You live in rented apartments, or flats bought with loans.

You haven’t seen your ancestral land in years.

You have no trees to call your own.

You don’t know your neighbors.

You don’t know how to grow food.

You move for jobs. You shift cities. You upgrade.

You dream of settling someday.

But you are still homeless.

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WHAT DID EDUCATION PROMISE?

1. Knowledge = Freedom

You thought knowledge would liberate you. But it trapped you in systems you never questioned.

2. Merit = Success

You believed exams reflect talent. They only reflect obedience and memory.

3. Degrees = Jobs

You assumed jobs were guaranteed. Now, you’re competing with millions for the same cubicle.

4. Jobs = Money

But salaries vanish in rent, petrol, school fees, and medical bills.

5. Money = House

But your house is a liability. Bought on loan. Designed for resale. Never truly yours.

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HOW EDUCATION MADE YOU HOMELESS

1. It severed your roots.

You moved from your village to a city for school. Then to a bigger city for college. Then to another one for a job. You became a migrant, not a settler.

2. It made land ‘irrelevant’.

You were told to leave farms, animals, and manual work behind. That digging soil is failure. That your father’s cow shed is backward. That an office is better than a hut.

3. It replaced real security with illusion.

A self-built mud home on your own land gives you true security.

But you were sold fake security: insurance, policies, rentals, shares, mutual funds.

4. It trained you to be a tenant in someone else’s system.

You learnt how to pay rent, not build.

You learnt how to consume, not create.

You learnt how to apply for jobs, not grow food.

5. It made you addicted to mobility.

You change jobs, cities, countries.

You call it progress.

But it’s rootlessness.

A man who can't stay still is not free—he is homeless.

6. It filled you with shame for staying back.

Staying in the village = failure.

Owning a mud home = poor.

Farming = no status.

You learnt to be ashamed of stability.

7. It replaced community with credentials.

Once, you belonged to a clan, a field, a neighborhood.

Now, you belong to LinkedIn.

You know no one. And no one knows you.

8. It made you chase ‘better living’ at the cost of living

Better cities, better jobs, better salaries.

But worse air, worse food, worse peace.

You left home for luxury.

You got a microwave, but no sunlight.

You got pizza, but no soil.

9. It trained you to pay for everything you once had freely.

Water. Food. Shelter. Energy. Education. Health.

Now, you pay rent, bills, fees, and premiums.

Because you were taught that “home” is a product, not a birthright.

10. It destroyed your capacity to build a home.

Not just physically.

But emotionally. Spiritually.

You never learnt how to stay.

You only learnt how to run.

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YOU ARE HOMELESS BECAUSE...

Your home is where your boss is.

Your family is who you talk to on weekends.

Your food is what Zomato sends.

Your life is what the HR decides.

And your peace is postponed until retirement.

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CONCLUSION

Education didn’t fail to give you a job.

It succeeded in making you manageable, mobile, dependent, scared, and disconnected.

It didn’t just take you out of your home.

It burnt the bridges so you can never return.

And now you roam — laptop in hand, loan in heart — calling it freedom.

But you are homeless.

And you don’t even know it.

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HEALING DIALOGUE: “WE HAVE DEGREES, BUT NO HOME”

A family of five, all highly educated, visits Madhukar in his off-grid home near Yelmadagi. They are tired, confused, and yearning. What begins as a complaint turns into confrontation, clarity, and a journey to reclaim home, soil, and self.

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Characters:

Madhukar – 43, a former veterinary doctor and professor who left the system to live off-grid with his wife Savitri and daughters Adhya and Anju.

Ravindra – 58, retired government officer, proud of his son’s IIT degree.

Lakshmi – 55, his wife, a postgraduate teacher, anxious about her children’s future.

Arjun – 30, software engineer, living in Bengaluru, paying EMI for a flat.

Pooja – 28, MBA, working in marketing, married to Arjun.

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PART ONE: THE ARRIVAL

(The family sits awkwardly on the mud floor. Anju serves them fresh guava slices. No fan. No Wi-Fi. Only silence.)

Ravindra: (fanning himself) I don’t understand. You were a professor. What made you throw it all and live like this?

Madhukar: I didn’t throw anything. I returned what wasn’t mine.

Lakshmi: But you were respected! Posted in a good city! Our son works for a US firm. My daughter-in-law too. You should’ve seen their flat. Beautiful interiors. AC. Two bedrooms.

Madhukar: And yet, here you are. On the floor of a mud house.

(Everyone falls silent.)

Arjun: We came because we’re tired. Not of work, but of this... unending chase. We thought once we bought the flat, things would settle. But we still feel unsettled.

Pooja: We have everything. But nothing feels ours.

Madhukar: That’s because nothing is yours.

Not the land. Not the air. Not even your thoughts.

They’re all rented. Or borrowed.

Education convinced you that home is a product.

Not a presence.

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PART TWO: THE UNLEARNING

Ravindra: But education is what gave us a better life!

Madhukar: Better than what?

Than growing your own food? Than drinking from your own well? Than playing under your own mango tree?

Lakshmi: We didn’t have options. We wanted our children to be safe.

Madhukar: So you made them dependent on strangers for food, strangers for shelter, strangers for security. You gave them an apartment, but no earth. An ID card, but no identity.

Arjun: (quietly) I don’t know my neighbors’ names. I haven’t spoken to the sun in years.

Pooja: We don’t even know what we’re craving anymore. We argue about decor. Travel. Savings. But the emptiness is somewhere deeper.

Madhukar: It’s called homelessness of the soul.

When you can’t stay with silence, can’t eat what you grow, can’t sleep under the stars, can’t live without a screen—

It’s not education. It’s dislocation.

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PART THREE: THE TURNING POINT

Ravindra: But we can’t undo everything! We’ve invested in Arjun’s flat. We have jobs. Loans.

Madhukar: You were never asked to undo. You were asked to see.

You were taught to climb ladders. Not to check if they’re leaning against the wrong wall.

Arjun: What do we do now?

Madhukar:

Pause.

Breathe.

Return.

One pot. One seed. One week of walking barefoot on soil. That’s how you begin.

Pooja: But our jobs—

Madhukar: Don’t quit. But stop selling your life to them.

Take back your mornings. Your food. Your water.

You’ll find that home isn’t a place.

It’s an act.

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FOLLOW-UP SCENE (AFTER 12 MONTHS)

(The family returns. This time, they walk the last kilometer. They carry jaggery from their leased farm. Their clothes are simple. Their eyes are brighter.)

Ravindra: We’ve started spending weekends on a small piece of land we leased. I hadn’t touched a plough in 30 years. Now I sleep deeper.

Lakshmi: I cook without gas now. I taught Pooja how to dry pickle in the sun. We argue less.

Arjun: We cancelled our Europe trip and used that money to build a small hut on the farm. We call it our real flat.

Pooja: I still work. But only part-time now. I stopped caring about campaigns and conversions. Now I convert compost.

Madhukar: (smiling) So, have you found your home?

Arjun: We didn’t find it.

We made it.

With mud, time, mistakes, and truth.

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RECLAIMING HOME: THE PATH FORWARD

Madhukar: Reclaiming your home isn’t a real estate plan. It’s a return to sanity.

You reclaim home when:

You touch soil more than screens

You know who grows your food

You carry water with your own hands

You eat with those who listen

You live in a place where birds are louder than your phone

You can die there without needing to be ‘shifted’

Pooja: But what about our degrees?

Madhukar: Use them to teach your children how not to fall into the same trap.

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BUKOWSKI-STYLE POEM: “DEGREE OF DISPLACEMENT”

(You have degrees. But not a doorstep to call your own.)

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you learned the difference

between a noun and a verb

but never how to plant a seed.

they taught you geography

but never your own coordinates.

you memorized rivers

but forgot to drink from one.

they gave you books,

binders, badges,

benchmarks, boards,

but never a tree

to sit under.

your handwriting improved

but your hands forgot

how soil feels.

you learnt to speak English,

but forgot the language

of cows, rain, wind.

they told you to dream big.

you dreamt cities,

cars, careers,

but never dreamt

a hut under a neem tree

with your grandmother snoring beside you.

you moved,

then moved again.

degree, job, promotion, transfer—

like a rat in a polished maze

bragging about its speed.

you pay rent to someone

who’s never seen your face.

you pay for food

grown by a man who doesn’t eat it.

you pay for water

that once flowed freely by your village rock.

and still,

you sit on a designer chair,

under an LED lamp,

in a 12th-floor box,

wondering why

you don’t feel safe.

why your chest tightens at 3 a.m.

why your child draws trees

without roots.

you are educated,

certified,

employable,

tax-paying—

and entirely,

completely,

homeless.

your ancestors had no degrees,

but they had land.

you have papers,

but no place.

you say:

“we are trying to settle.”

like a wind trying to settle in a cage.

like a river asking permission to flow.

home is not what you buy

it’s what you return to.

you can reclaim it

not with money—

but with mud.

not with language—

but with listening.

not by climbing—

but by coming down.

start small.

a drumstick tree.

a copper pot.

a brick.

a bench under the sun.

because one day,

your child will ask:

“Where are we from?”

and if you don’t know,

you have truly

lost everything.

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