Terrible Week

Just when I thought nothing effects me and I have become immune to all feelings something happens which shakes me up...

This happened on Friday. I was walking back home from a fancy shopping mall, having bought some totally unnecessary cosmetics, a Rs. 400/- scratch guard for my newly acquired fancy cell, saving the same cell from the rains by keeping it in a plastic bag and still worrying weather the rain drops shall get into it...

It had stopped raining and I was near a traffic signal. Suddenly I spot this shall young girl, around 3 years old, sitting near a shop door. The shutter of the shop was down and the child was sitting with a very sad a morose expression on her face. The expression on her face was as if she had lost all hope in life and she was all very tired of everything... She looked like an urchin but a pretty clean one... It almost seemed as if she had run away from her house and had nowhere to stay. Her clothes were quite clean. There were a few plastic bags near her which seemed the only belongings that she had.

The next thing that I saw almost broke my heart... Next to her, there was another girl around 4 years old, her thin nylon salwar drenched in rain water, a thin dupatta covering her head sleeping with her face towards the shutter. She was probably not well and shivering with the cold. She was so tiny and her legs pulled tightly towards her chest that I would have easily missed her. She was lying on a a small stone on the pavement.

I asked the younger girl where her mother was and she generally pointed in the direction of the road... I asked the shopkeepers around and everybody looked at them as if they were seeing the two children for the first time. One of the told me that these are the part of the group that beg on the signal nearby and their mother would also be somewhere around...

I asked the child weather she was hungry and she just nodded. The only thing that I could do was to buy two packets of biscuits and give it to the girl with the hope that she eats them and the mother does not sell it of... How I wish I could have taken both the girls home, given them a proper meal and some warm clothes... I really felt ashamed to be carrying such a expensive phone around and worrying about totally frivolous matters...

I love Bombay and the people in this city but when I see incidents like this and the way we treat our children, I feel that somewhere we have failed miserably....There are so many such children living like this and most often that not, we are so engrossed in our daily routines that we turn a blind eye to them...

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Last week was generally very depressing... Im not able to find a house that I want and my best friend's marriage is breaking... The second is a shocker.... I never never thought that there was something wrong in their relationship... They were my ideal couple... I still cant get over it...