THE UNFORGETTABLE SUNDAY

Last Sunday, earth to me felt like mercury. While I was perspiring like a pig, I and my friend had enough reasons to curse our lives as ‘mere students’. After haggling with several auto wallahs at Connaught place, we finally got a good bargain for our destination-South Extension.

My friend, Hrishant, is an ambitious boy with social and humanist philosophy towards work. “I have a dream to start a school in Shimla”, he said with a twinkle in his eye. Almost immediately I spurted out a query, “Why don’t you put up a school in some rural area where the underprivileged don’t have access to education, have no transport facilities to reach the town?” Without delay, he answered back, “My school’s name would be ‘SOKA’ which means ‘value creation’ in Japanese. I truly believe in the power of creating value out of education. Starting a school at ‘such places’ is next to impossible. Where would I get the capital from? How can I expect to provide a decent education when the source of income is nil! I can imagine my school having numerous societies such as the cultural society, the music society and so on……” The auto wallah was waiting for the traffic signal to go green and the heavy black smoke coming out of the DTC bus standing next to us had left me in no mood to communicate further.

Just then, a girl of age nine to ten came to sell packets of fancy pencils to us. It was such an ironical situation that both of us just could not face the little girl. The child almost fell on Hrishant’s feet and begged for the can of coke in his hand. He gave the can to her and looked the other way. For a while, I forgot the honking of the horns and the detestable smoke. All I could hear was the ringing bell of a school, children shouting and rejoicing and the voice of the street girl begging at the same time. Both voices colliding in my mind, instantly brought me back to the extreme reality. I don’t even remember the girl’s face because I just could not keep my eyes off the pencils in her hand. Pencils, which are tools of learning for a child, had instead become her source of income! We were both ashamed of the situation and the future headmaster had nothing more to say……..