About two weeks ago I had gone to the market and just as I finished my errand and began walking back, I saw a little boy, a street child to be precise, right in front of me, standing quietly, with a tiny smile plastered on his face, looking at the big green cooling coconuts on the stall where a man with a foreboding look stood serving customers. I immediately touched my purse but then noticed another young woman standing at the stall, looking at the boy and smiling. The boy was not looking at her and the woman seemed to be really amused. So I assumed what I was naturally thinking the woman was going to do and asked her if she was giving the boy a coconut.
"No no...Im not giving him anything" she promptly said and reached out her hand to grab the watery coconut that the man now placed in her hands. She gave one more look at the street boy and walked away.
The boy was a little one, just about four years old, almost the age my daughter will be in a few months, and I immediately sent out a thank-you at our own circumstances and at the fact that we are so lucky.
I went up to the little boy who was only wearing a pair of shorts, his hair matted with the dust and the heat of this crazy summer. I put a hand on his hand and a smile on my face and asked him if he would like to have a coconut. He nodded, the smile just starting on his face, his eyes killing me with guilt and shame at my own standing. I asked the vendor for one coconut water and handed it to him, helping him hold the fruit as it was too heavy for the little one. As he drank the water I asked the vendor for another coconut and once the boy had had his fill, gave him another. Now his smile was really ear-to-ear. He sipped it finish just standing in front of me and I gave his head a tousle. He went his way and I went mine, looking back once or twice at that little one, whose eyes so stayed with me for the next few days, and bring back a sadness and a sense of tears even as I write this..
It didn't take much of my time, it didn't take me a fortune to let that little one have just a tiny bit of the love and care he rightfully deserves. He may not be mine, he may not be my little one, but he is, nonetheless, a little one....And isn't it our job, as grown-ups that we say we are, to take care of these countless little ones out there, who have been thrown at the mercy of the road, with the attitude that they are born to the road and can manage life on their own...that's a crass excuse...and for that woman, and for those countless people like her...I only have the choicest of words that I can't express on a parenting page.....maybe some other time....
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And like I always believe in and say:
'Heal the world we live in
Save it for our children' - MJ
Be good to your little one, and to the millions of little ones out there who truly need every bit of love and compassion they can get.....Be a grown up...save the little ones....
Happy Parenting!!!!
Debolina Raja Gupta
I care for the countless little ones out there....Do you?
am too busy to care, but want to do something. Jaago Re and BlogAdda.com are helping me do my bit for the society.
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