Have You Ever ?

Care

 

A column for Acts and Thoughts of Kindness

 

Prasanna Nanada Kumar

 

Tamil Nadu

 

a.EmagePhotography

 

 

Have you ever feared life more than death?

Have you ever been used as a tool to generate sympathy?

Have you ever slept on a street naked with a dirty bit of cloth hardly covering your precious genitals?

Have you ever been patronized to such an extent that you start feeling you no longer belong to the same species?

Have you ever found it extremely intricate to differentiate between food and mud?

Have you ever been so hungry that your stomach deflates twice its size and even if you wanted to eat you couldn’t?

Have your own parents beaten you close to death and threatened you to beg for a living?

Have you ever slept on a stone bed and a rock hard pillow?

Have you been forced to market yourself as a cripple to earn a penny?

Have you ever been looked down upon with contempt by every other passerby on the street?

Have you ever looked down upon yourself with contempt?

Have your limbs been cut off just to generate sympathy?

Have you ever slept next to a rabid dog?

Have you ever earned a living when you were hardly a year old?

Have you ever looked at yourself with utmost disgust?

Have you ever regretted every second of your damned life in this cruel world?

Have you ever felt like shit?

Have you ever forgotten your birthday?

Have you ever slept on the same platform where dogs and rats urinate?

Have you ever tried begging? Not to God for mercy but to a human for alms!

You want me to find a job and let me earn my living?

So, why don’t you hire me?

So, why don’t you provide me with education? 

So, why don’t you adopt me?

So, why don’t you erase my past and give me a future?


Empathized and recorded by,

Prasanna Nandakumar.