It was one of those mornings on a crowded suburban railway station in mumbai. I was one of those amongst the crowd. “Will I get a seat on the train ” This was a thought that was paramount on everyone’s mind. And amongst all those people was a child – in completely soiled clothes, with a pitiful face, not more then 6-7 years old with a single minded focus on targeting the groups of girls and women present on that platform. With every new group, his face was filling up with more and more sorrow and pity. All the people, looking at his pitiful face were being generous enough in donating him a rupee or two.

Child labour – something which is prohibited in India was openly being encouraged subconsciously by the common public present on that platform. ” I am hungry and haven’t eaten for two days, please donate a rupee or two ” the same child said, while pulling on my dress!! Taking pity on him I started some small talk and offered to take him to an eatery in front of the railway platform. At first the child didn’t seem to hear what I said and kept repeating his lines ” I am hungry and haven’t eaten for two days, please donate a rupee or two “. I repeated myself again and this time also added that he was free to eat whatever he wanted to from the eatery. After we repeated ourselves again I changed my lines and asked him to wait while I went and brought him some biscuits to eat. This brought out the frustration in him and the pity and sorrowful face that I was seeing suddenly changed into an angry and wicked face. His tone also became very abusive and because of this, people who were oblivious to our presence suddenly started looking at us and taking an interest in our conversations.

This was a complete change in circumstance for me and I found myself thinking about this world in which we are living where we had made it impossible for ourselves to help someone with a clear conscience. He must have thought that I will be taken aback because he tried to create a scene but when I raised my voice to protest, the child ran away.

My feelings of giving back to the society in some form or the other had taken a huge hit by this episode that day !! Begging had become a business and involving children was now-a-days something that had become very common!! On the streets of Mumbai especially on street signals, poor women begging with their child in their arms has become a common sight.

The reason for remembering this Incident from the distant past was because every year on my child’s birthday giving back by way of donations to the society by helping orphans was something that I was looking to do. We spend a lot of money and time every year celebrating the birthdays of our kids. May be if we donate some of this money to needy people it would bring about a sense of satisfaction.

A Mother raises her children and takes care of them. She does it because of her love and affection towards her children, feels happy when they are happy and takes active part in her child’s moments. With these feelings, I also cannot imagine how children who don’t have a mother in their life be coping with these challenges. Read somewhere about Matoshree orphanage in Pune. So I decided to celebrate my child’s birthday in this orphanage. We picked up some snacks and cakes for the children and visited the orphanage with my complete family and spent some time with these kids. I was very happy to see the determined look in the eyes of the children to go to school and pursue education. I also felt that I learnt a lot from those kids that day by the manner in which they were facing the circumstances present in front of them. We owe a lot to our society and we must ensure that we fulfill our duties. We may be disappointed by a couple of instances in our life but there is a lot to be learned from them too!!