Moral Short Story – Pick pocket
Photo credit: gbh from morguefile.com
After a wide gap of 1 year, I was much excited to go to my own home at tezu. Being tired from the busy routine during the exams, we were eagerly waiting for this moment.
So, I started my journey from Muzaffarpur on 10th August 2013. I caught up the Avadh Assam Express in the morning. Then that whole day was spent looking through the window, sleeping and a couple of hours reading magazines. The next day, the train took me to the Guwahati junction where it arrived at almost 8:00 clock. On the platform, I did my breakfast.
I came outside and sat on a metallic chair on the platform. I could see there a large mass of people rushing in and out of the train when it came. There were all classes of vendors selling different sorts of items. Just two or three steps ahead of me there sat a small family with their luggage aside of them. The women was having a hand fan to relieve her from the warm humid climate.
At 1100 hours, there came Rajdhani express thus pulling a huge crowd towards it. I caught hold of my luggage immediately. After the crowd was gone, I saw that the women in front of me was scolding and slapping an innocent faced boy wrapped in torn dirty clothes. I asked the women the cause for her anger over the poor chap. She explained me in an egoic voice that the boy had stolen a purse from some person’s pocket and had been caught by her to be punished.
She added further, ” It is our duty to remove all types of crimes from our society as one crime give birth to ten crimes”.
I had no words to speak in the favour of the boy in front of the women at that moment. Then the boy came near me with heavy steps.
I asked to him, ” What is your name?”
He answered, ” Manoj”.
Then I asked again, “Do you go to school.”
He said, ” I have never been to school, I had just watched it from a distance”.
” Then what are you doing here”?
“It is the only way left for me to satisfy my hunger”.
” Why don’t you get engaged in some sort of earning, is not that better than what you are doing right now “?
” Sir, my father did the same thing and now where we are? He worked for the sugar mill for five years but couldn’t earn even a single paise. Now, he is in the hospital where the doctor is demanding a huge amount for treatment. So sir, where should I go? Where shall I get this money”?
I said, ” But what do you expect from your future with this”?
He said, ” Here we are managing just one day of our life everyday, so where does the future come? Please let me do what I am doing and forgive me if you ever become the victim.” J
ust then, my train for tinsukia was arriving. I picked up my luggage and rushed towards the train’s gate. Inside the train I was thinking in my own that, ” What was my responsibility? What can I do for that type of boys? How can we remove the affected from the clutch of poverty, especially the child ones”?
At last I came to the conclusion that even if it is impossible to remove poverty completely from the society, it can happen that we improve ourselves, our thinking our lifestyles. Let us think, all of us that if we have been given such a good opportunity to learn, to help, to make a better base of a healthy society, we should have a strong determination to change the world through education and cooperation……..
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