... a pair of malnourished eyes

On my way back home, every day, I see a small boy floating like a wasted paper piece of lottery, on the Dum Dum Cantonment Railway Platform. This platform offers him half board and, side by side, life imprisonment. He always laments, for what I don't know and never desire to know a bit too. I only watch him tightening his grip on the loose pant. His navel has maximum darkness and a thick patch of blood marred by dirt and dust is always there to attract my eyes to his suntanned bare bust.

One day, he came up to me and asked for a coin. The face of my nieces appeared in the subway of my heart. I asked if he would love to eat something. He pointed at a cake luring from inside a glass jar. I bought him a block of cake and asked him to devour it quickly. I also lifted mine and had a bite. He gave a smile, and without wasting time, thudded himself on the platform floor and sank his teeth into it. His smile edulcorated my cake.

I waited there until he devoured it completely. During this brief period, I stole some of his charismatic facial expressions - the movement of muscles - no less resplendent than that of others.

Children of his age have two eyes that flash two thousand hopes. While this boy melts over the melting pot due to his weakness. The difference is nowhere except in our lack of ability to accept a simple truth. The impoverished remain the same, while our ministers, the glitterati, shrill out their endeavour of emptying their Laxmi-bhandar for feeding the street children. However, it all goes in front of a sleek microphone on Children's Day and hardly touches the ground in the rest of the year.

It is easy to cast votes; it is easier to run a government. Therefore and only therefore, the ruderal children, human beings after all, when tiptoe along my moving legs, I helplessly notice the tired signs of their tireless starvation...

3 comments:

Saru Singhal said...

You did a wonderful thing but in our country children are not considered the future. We know the condition of mid-day meal program. I am happy that there are people like you:)

Glynis Jolly said...

There are programs here in the US to help children although, to tell you the truth, I find them a little shallow.

বৃষ্টি বিলাসিনি said...

You made a difference :)

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