School chale hum

The sight of kids begging on traffic lights is not a new sight in India. You feel sad, but once the light turns green you move on. Sad plight, but there's nothing you or I can do. Yesterday though, I saw something that had me sad and thinking for a while.

It's a new trend in beggardom to show the audience some value for their money, so they have these small kids do different tricks in the hope that they can get some money from people in the 5-10 seconds to go. It's really sad and the new child labor law seems to be for some other country here. The PMC has helped by installing countdown indicators at most lights, so these kids have it down to a science. 90 seconds between green lights. 60 for the show, 30 for the collection. Waiting at a traffic light, I saw a small kid playing something like a home-made drum set. He had his back to me but something looked familiar. Show done, he turned towards the audience and that's when it struck me.

He was wearing the St. Vincent's school uniform!!!

Instinctively, I felt like ripping off the pocket off his shirt, since the insignia means a lot to me, and I felt affronted that something like this was on public display. Do what you want with a plain shirt, but don't show me my school uniform while begging on the street. I even swore at that unknown parent who gave that shirt in charity and in good spirit, but did not tear out that pocket. But, it was not fair to this poor kid. How would he know the value of the school uniform, when he has no clue what a school is?

At least this way, in some weird way, he has a school uniform for himself. I hope to God some day this child also has a school for himself.