Angel Heart

The sun was setting down behind a row of high rise buildings. The evening was coming to its usual cool terms after a hot day. It being a weekend, people have flocked to the city center in hordes. There were people shopping, snacking, gossiping, roaming, children running, hawkers shouting, horns blowing.... as if a MAD RUSH has set in and I was part of the mad rush too...

"Cool Joint"; the restaurant, round the corner appeared to be the most happening place. From children to young to old, everyone seems to be having a gala time enjoying snacks. I reached over the counter and ordered my favorite butterscotch ice cream. Finding no place inside due to the heavy rush, I came out to the sidewalk and started savoring the cold scoops. From the sidewalk, I was watching over the traffic signal checking out nothing as such but the lights changing from green to orange to red.

I felt a pulling in the sides of my trousers and turned around to find two children looking at me helplessly. A boy and a girl. They wore some dirty linen torn at some places, empty feet, uncombed hair. They looked pathetic. The boy was small but a lil bigger than the girl. Brother perhaps. The girl been crying before as the trail of the tears has left two faint lines on her dust laden face. The boy was telling something. More than his words his gestures conveyed that both of them are hungry. I checked my pockets and placed two coins in his hand. All this while the girl was awe stuck. She was watching the melting scoops in my other hand. When the boy started retracing his way back, the girl looked helplessly first at him and then at me. She stretched her hands asking for the ice cream. I turned my back. When I looked back they were not in the sight.

Thomas Jefferson said, "All men are created equal". How WRONG!!!! We don't decide where we are born but fate does. The surrounding from then on shapes our life and future. Born in a poor surrounding, where the emphasis is on surviving the next day and looking out for basic amenities like food, shelter and cloth; the fun & learning takes back stage. Rags to riches; the stories are so rare. I am today what I am because I never had to think from where my next meal will come from. I went to some good schools and then got the opportunities and here I am. But all people are not that fortunate. Surely not the boy and girl I encountered that day. Children will always be children, poor or well off, they will love having chocolates and ice creams, playing with toys and stuffs...what you and I did when we were of their age.

I have never been so driven to this point for doing something for the unfortunate ones. I started searching for avenues. In India where 65% of people earn just Rs100 per day for their living, there is no dearth of avenues and reaching out to the children in need. I became a member of World Vision India,  humanitarian organization working for the causes for the children living in poverty. As I became a mentor for Suraj, a 12 year old boy living in the slums of Rajastan, I have never felt so proud of myself. The other day I received a post from him containing a beautiful painting he has painted for me; a token of his appreciation for touching his life which was touched like never before. Looking at the painting; a thought crossed my mind, I may have broken the heart of the little girl by not sharing the ice cream but I sure am making for it by joining few pieces of an angel heart..