I didn’t want to regret this time, I regretted when we were moving out from the flop Pitbull concert in The Center Stage Mall, Noida and I saw a teacher who was teaching the poor kids at I:30 AM. I wanted to meet him and appreciate his efforts, I wanted to ask him from where does he gets the courage to do this type of social work. So I just turned around and looked for that boy. The boy who was asking me for something to eat just two minutes ago and I simply ignored him and moved forward. He was around ten years of age, wearing rags and had an innocent face. I went back to find him and suddenly I saw him sitting near the big circular fountain in Galleria market. He was looking at people with hope that may be someone will give him something to eat. There were many people sitting in that area, some mothers who were just back from the paediatrician after the checkup of their children were now feeding them ice-creams. Some teenagers were just sitting and having their talks, some were talking on phones. But that boy was almost absent in everyone’s eyes, as if nobody is sitting there.
Quickly I went to him and asked,”bete ice cream khaoge?” he said, yes. Then I asked him to follow me to the ice cream shop. I bought him an ice cream of his choice. Then I got an idea that how can an ice cream fill his stomach, I thought of buying him a bread, but somehow I decided for pastries, so that his parents can also have them. May be I thought this would be a treat for them. Like, kind of a birthday party. I asked him where are your parents? He said,”ghar par”. I smiled and asked how far is your house? He said it’s just near by. So I bought six pastries and handed them to him. I could see the happiness on his face. He said, “thank you auntie”. And I just smiled.
Now, I was happy. I can’t explain the feeling of my own happiness and satisfaction, that I’ve done something good for the first time in my life. This was a feeling, which one can never get when he donates to an NGO or any orphanage. Because here I could directly see that one person, on this planet, is able to have something of his choice, just because of me.
I reminded of all the good articles read on Speaking Tree about feeding the poor, but actually have never taken any personal initiative towards that. Every time I got a feeling that it’s not worth it to give them money because I don’t know where are they going to use it? But somehow I felt feeding someone is the best anyone can do. Because here you don’t have to worry about your money that whether it’s going to be used for the genuine reason or not. Now I could think that joining ST has taught me something indeed.
For the first time I also realised that how ignorant are we towards our own surroundings.
Thanks to all the people on ST, because I’ve learnt something from everybody here.
Medhavi 🙂
