The boy on the street

He sat there on the pavement, an idle guy with a towel over his lap. There were some odd rupee notes strewn about on the towel, his hands lying loosely over them to prevent them from flying. He seemed to be about 10 years of age, had a dark complexion, was thin and had burn marks on his chest.

Those were the blatant features - something for everyone to see. But there was something else which was so much more obvious that it has been in my mind for the past few days and refuses to be wiped out. The kid’s face, the manner in which he sat, his expression of total indifference to everything and everyone around him!!

There were people passing by him in either direction. A few stopped to give him some money. But that expression on his face remained the same. There was light wind on that Sunday which caused a few notes to fly. He remained seated. A man brought back the Rupee 10 note which had flown with the wind. He did not even bother looking up. Yet he was sitting on the pavement, a towel spread over his lap.

I am not able to figure out that expression, or rather the lack of it. I have seen kids beg before, their manner of begging coming right out of the textbook. Their “akka, akka, akka…”, the ‘please help me’ look, the light tugging at your shirt. All this probably fed to them when they started. I assume they were told to do and they do. So blissfully ignorant at that age that begging might have been just another game.

So why the difference in this kid? Was he moody? Was he lost in other thoughts? Or was he just not that interested in the game??

What if he was forced to do it against his will and to him it was not even a game! Then don’t we ‘sympathizers’ become a part of what forces him to continue??

There might be factors which I do not know about which may be the reasons behind this kid begging. But I do know that the motivation for those factors to act is given by us! In a span of about 45 minutes, he had collected about a hundred rupees. Why then wouldn’t someone tell him to sit on the pavement rather than send him to school?

Small acts of ours can make a difference and I mean this in both the positive way and the negative. Let us not become the reason for these kids to beg.