Yeh daag daag ujala, yeh dundhli si subah
Yeh who sahar toh nahin jiska Intjar tha mujhe.
Yesterday evening, I was driving back to my home from office, and then I remembered that I have to take some medicines for my mother. I parked my car on the one side of Rani bagh chowk, and came into the super market. Even on late evening market was busy, mainly because of women shopping for the Karvachowth festival or decorating their hands with Mehndi.
As I crossed the main chowk and came to the sparkling and busy mall, a boy of hardly seven or eight years, carrying a rags bag on his back, came to me. He said that he is very hungry and has not eaten since morning. I normally never give attention to beggars, but the thing was that the boy was really very small, and belongs to the age of innocence. His eye was pale yellow and face was looking tired. He told that he works to collect the rags or junk items from the roads or from the dustbins and then sell it to the junk market. That fetch him twenty to twenty-five rupees for a day and today he was not luckey and could not get any thing.
I took the boy to the nearby footstall and bought two fried burgers to him. The boy ate very hurriedly and kept one burger in his pocket and said that he would eat it later. After eating the spark retuned on his face and he looked cheering. He said thanks to me and then left for his usual job.
As he left, I moved to market, and after finishing the purchase I drove back to home. While driving boy’s face again came into my mind, his innocence, cuteness, deprived of childhood, and Irony of destiny. I thought what I did was not the solution, and nobody has the solution, and those probably have the solutions are not bothered to find. They are to busy in boasting the opening and closing ceremony of commonwealth games.
The morning newspaper was full of the coverage about the list of India’s most rich persons, an Industrialist who have made a twenty seven-floor mansion for him. Can this child or many children like him proudly say that they belong to a country that spent millions, and billions, on an occasion that hardly matters for the welfare of its people.
