India Shining....Really?

A few days back, I had some work with my girlfriend. When in working hours, I generally don’t prefer to enter her office and rather prefer to discuss any sort of work or talk with her outside her office. I was waiting for her outside her office, sitting in my bike by the road side. I saw a gang of four street children coming from the opposite end of the road towards my end of the road. They seemed to be beggars. Or may be they were those children who might have run away from their homes or may be their parents must have been beggars. All said and done, they looked like beggars and none of them might have been older than 10 years of age. As they walking towards me I could see them walking and running in gangs of two each. They were busy in playing with each other, hitting and playing with their hands, running around carelessly. But as they came nearer, I could see that they were actually fighting with each other. When they came and stopped besides me, I could make out from their facial looks that they were a pair of brothers fighting other pair of brothers. They were abusing each other loudly and carelessly. The younger brother of one group was trying to pick a fight with the younger brother of the other group and elder was doing the same with the elder. Sort of systematic fight. Isn’t it? I ignored them and called on my girlfriend’s cell phone so that she could come out as early as possible. As they were loudly abusing each other, I could not ignore them for a longer period of time and as I look towards them, one of the elder brothers, was holding an iron rod in his hand and his opponent was holding a big stone in his hand! The younger brothers had moved away and were holding each other’s collars. The boy with iron rod in his hand was also holding a white ball of cloth in his other hand. I could make out from the way they were carelessly abusing each other and trying to fight each other, that the cloth ball in the boy’s hand could have been nothing else but what these street children used as drug to get a kick(nasha). It was a cloth ball dipped in what they called white ink, which when deeply inhaled would give a kick! I knew this because one of my aunt’s was a social worker who handled the street children projects. May be they were fighting for that piece of dripped cloth. It was a sort of war between brothers. The boy with the stone in his hand was threatening the one with rod in hand, “My Stone is more powerful than your rod. I will hit this on your head and you will die you sick bastard!”The other one replied, “Ever seen my dad in our gully roaming with this rod? I saw him stabbing a person with this one! If I stab you with this rod, it blood will come out your stomach like water! And you will die you motherfucker!”“Oy!” shouted the one with stone in his hand and lunged in anger towards the one with rod. I caught hold of his hand, snatched the stone from his hand and threw it away just at the right time or else he would have broken the skull of the other boy. I shouted at them, “Hey you dogs? Don’t you have home? Why do you fight? Don’t fight here! Go away!” But they didn’t seem to listen to me. The other boy was trying to hit the boy now unarmed with his rod but the unarmed boy managed to escape his attack. It was lethal. The younger generation was fighting bare handed at the far end. I could not find a way to stop them except for yelling at them. But I felt embarrassed to stop them or beat them up as they were not bothered about whoever was seeing them. But the situation was such that one might have killed, or at least injured the other one badly.As I looked around, I saw no one was bothered about this. Some passers by shouted at them, “Oy don’t fight here you dogs! Rascals! Get lost” But when they wouldn’t listen to them, they were on their way. I saw a few people enjoying the scene! They were laughing at these children! For a moment I felt like shouting at them but then I knew I was no Sunny Deol to yell at these people. After all even I was not able to stop them. What was I doing to stop them? Nothing. But atleast I was not enjoying the situation. Then, suddenly the gatekeepers of two adjoining office complexes came out and started beating those boys. They beat them ruthlessly with their hands. The boy with rod in his hand tried to hit one of the gatekeepers but the gatekeeper was strong enough to sntach it away from his hands. The other boy started crying and abusing the gatekeepers. The one who tried to attack a gatekeeper with his rod seemed to have no impact of beating and was constantly abusing the person beating him up. This showed that he was on a high(Nasha). Well, finally the gatekeepers were successful in driving all the four boys away from that place. I took the parcel from my girlfriend and drove back to my office on my bike. On my way back, I saw the same boys sharing a few pizza pieces outside pizza hut restaurant. They were sitting near the dustbin. I came back to my office and I talked to myself for a minute or two in solitude. Was this the future of India? And we being the present of India, what have we been doing all these years? Is people’s skin so fat that nothing penetrates it? Can’t other people feel the same as I felt? Everyone has his or her problems in life but this was striking. One innocent child was out to kill other innocent child! I am not exaggerating this incident but atleast I could make out one thing. That is, what it means to be poor. That day, I didn’t see two beggars or street children fighting, but I saw two innocent children, inspired by their on parents, trying to take each other’s lives. Even their parents can’t be blamed because they also must have grown up in a similar environment. So, it is a vicious circle. It’s a trend. It goes on. But it needs a breakthrough.
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