Living in an apartment behind my house in a musty, mangled town, is a crippled kid. Not crippled, but mentally crippled. He has been the same since his childhood. And now that he is well-nigh 7 years old, he is still crippled. He can talk, but not meaningfully, he can sense, but not impeccably. He is grappled by a mental ailment, because of which he has suffered all his life, and will in the future. His neighbors look down on him with disdain; who would want to live near a person who loiters aimlessly, wandering like a lost soul? It injures their so called ‘status’ which they work hard to maintain.It makes them appear perverse. Believe me, many people in your vicinity do the same. Whenever he attends a congregational meeting, people sympathize with him. He hates it. I know he does, for I, unlike many others, have been endowed with the ability to sense other people’s feeling, the fountain of ebullition that sprinkles the water suffused with emotions both good and bad gushing forth from them. Once his father, reprimanding him rather severely for a minor mistake, beat him in front of a large contingent of people, assembled at a place of worship. And I stood, transfixed, rooted to the spot, able to do nothing, sharing the fate of other people who gazed at him. It made the anger inside me well up, as I stood, cognizant of the fact that I could do nothing. I would fain let a switchblade pierce my heart than watch a helpless child being beaten in an abominable manner. And no one stopped him. Oaths and swear-words flowed incessantly from his mouth, like water flowing from a hose-pipe, or a vinaceous fluid flowing down one’s throat, as he beat his child for the ‘shame’ he had brought upon him.
It has been well over a year after that event. Today, when I saw the child again, I realized how little things had changed. How little things change. He might grow up to be a fine man, yet mentally incapable. He still babbles like a new-born babe. The purpose of life is lost for him. He is nothing to you. Nothing to me. Just a human……