Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink!!

After around a solid five minutes, there he was, moving towards everyone and staring at them to get a poor glimpse of their faces.

Understanding his problem, I quickly went towards him..
Me: Hi..umm..are you Lokesh?
Lokesh: Aaama..hmm..nee..ee..nngaa?
Me: Hi Lokesh, naan dhaan Akshaya..unga scribe..enna theriyudha?
Lokesh: Enaku epdinga akka therium..seri vaanga akka ulla polaam..

I felt a pang of guilt in my heart for having asked something like that. Ordering and cursing myself to think twice before uttering the next word, I followed him silently to the lecturer’s room.
We had a short talk with his lecturer, after which Lokesh had gone to have his lunch. I was just sitting and mentally scheduling my works and decided on having a stroll around the college. And that’s exactly when I got the urge to start this blog! In just 10 minutes of time, I had mixed emotions swirling inside me..and the reason behind all this was that I was seeing something that I couldn’t digest.

This place I was in, was the college which taught people about social working (MASTERS in social work it seems!!) and around me, were 100s of young students who were ‘able’ in every possible way, who had enough time to chit-chat their way to glory, who had enough money to waste a full bottle of coke for the sake of having fun.. But not a single soul out there had the heart to help this poor boy, who was longing for love, support, friendship and what not!
What is the big deal in just studying about social working, when you can’t help your classmate who is in dire need?(Heart of hearts, I was feeling proud of myself!!)
It was a rude shock to me, specially because I had come with this wrong notion that the college was for differently-abled people.

My deep, fervent thoughts were interrupted by Lokesh’s voice. Without giving it a second thought, I asked him if students in his class wouldn’t budge to help him. It was so sweet of him to maturely say that they don’t help him only because project works should be done individually (His project, for which I was trying to help him, was based on visually impaired people and their psycho-social problems..well..how apt!!!). I couldn’t stop myself from asking him “why? can’t they even help you in just mere reading or writing?” With a smile, he answered “vidunga ka..they might not have time”

If visually-impaired people are called differently-abled ..then what do we call people who are heartless??

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