On 19th feb 2015, I went through one of the most busiest street of Karachi around 9am, the street which connects way for four giant roads of the city, where I saw a 3-4years barefoot innocent child who was wearing old, tarred, dark maroon clothes but with a fresh happy face. He was begging with a smiling face as it was a role play or a class activity assigned to him by some teacher. There were many people around him on the same street who were in rush and voice of that child was disturbing and irritating for them. Most of them ignored that boy. Few of them insulted him but it did not affect the performance of the boy. Later on, one old lady gave that boy few rupees. Then suddenly that smile of child changed into a laughter and child walked in a jumping style and ran away clapping his hands with joy and naive expressions of some achievement. Same night around 10.30pm I went through the same street. I again saw that child sitting at the corner of the pavement. This time he was wearing same dress with addition of black sweater over his dark maroon tarred clothes along with tired red eyes. He was trying his level best to get up again in order to do some work most probably begging. But he was unable to do so as he was tired, weak and maybe empty stomach. Then he put his head down for few seconds and closed his eyes to take rest. Suddenly I saw a woman who already had one infant in her one hand arrived there and started beating that child brutally and shouting at him in some regional language which was not understandable for me but what I was only able to understand was that child was saying “AIII MAA” “ AJ REHENDE MAA”. Word Maa represents that she was mother of that boy. And after some negotiations she took all those pennies from that boy and made that little boy to beg again. He had no choice what so ever but to beg again.
The small story of that boy has raised a lot of questions from this society that what kind of childhood that boy was compelled to face during his most innocent period of life. Are parents showing wrong path to their offspring? What kind of society are we generating for the future? What kind of psychology we are drilling in our next generation to come. This huge city is getting even bigger day by day by progressing and generating millions of revenue each day but are we not neglecting small basic things which are weakening roots of this giant city.
By
Nabeel Rashid