A sunny summer morning, as I walk past the trees and the lanes, bypassing the crowds to reach office on time. Droplets of sweat are marching down my face, as I try to stop them helplessly with my handkerchief. I approach a bus stop on my way, when suddenly the morning calm is shattered by a wailing child. As I look around, I find a mother chasing an urchin girl with a stick in her hand. The child, barely 2 years and only in her undies had already received the first blow on her thigh and was crying aloud in pain. She was running away, howling and trying to save her skin from further destruction. The mother was unrepentant though. She was swearing at the poor child and threw the stick at her which missed her narrowly. This chase had to end now unless the child gets brutally crushed under an oncoming bus, I said to myself still walking away from the incident.
The area was thronging with office-goers and on-lookers. One of them was urging the mother to let-go of the chase since it was a child but the antagonized female was in no mood to take feedback. In her fight for freedom, the child lost hopelessly to her bête noir getting severely assaulted once again. And as I looked on, our lady ‘Goliath dragged the little one by her arms. But not before an educated gentleman crossed over and questioned the woman in a stern voice for this public display of atrocity on a young girl child.
Elsewhere in the newspaper, I read a small boy called Om who was found by a social worker, stranded at the Mumbai Central station. He was apparently left by her parents to fend for himself with a suitcase full of his own stuff. Om doesn’t recollect the name of his parents or where he’s come from. While I am penning this sad but important article, a little one in some part of this country is being molested, assaulted or sexually abused silently. These vulnerable angels, our future generation endure the wrath of the dirty by-products of our society while we continue to focus on our so called exceptional economic development.
