the rag picker

Today while I was walking my way back from the institute, I saw a child. Someone whose resemblance matched that of the rag picker of my thoughts. I don’t know how old she was. Anyways she is starved enough to look half of her age.

Dark. She had hair that hadn’t been oiled for years. Stunted and small. She wore a green skirt which was too long for her. She walked with a gait that told me that she had never held anyone’s hands. Her tiny feet had no chappals. The road I knew was burning with the afternoon heat. May be that is why they were hurrying away. They- my rag picker and her mentor. She had a man who walked beside her. He hurried her along the way a shepherd leads his sheep.

I tried to keep pace with them. And then they halted. She wanted to see the children of the well-off do karate. That amused her.

Those kids had everything she had always wanted-clothes, food, comfort, love, a future. She didn’t even have a present. She lived on the streets—like an animal.

I waited for her to turn her face. I wanted to see her eyes, pale and small…I wanted to read her mind.

But as I walked away other thoughts meandered into my mind…