nostalgia

That little girl was dressed in blue color shalwar kameez, but I still remember the helplessness visible through her eyes while babysitting my neighbour’s daughter who was just a little younger than that girl’s age.
“Where is your elder sister, who used to come with you?” I asked that girl whose elder sister,I had seen with her some weeks ago in my last observation.
“She died a few days ago because of her heart problem and we didn’t have the money to afford the operation” she answered with a rather normal tone transforming into a sad one while telling the last part. I felt quiet guilty of bringing an unwanted traumatic memory to her which she may be trying to forget to overcome. It’s a fifteen years old memory, still vivid in my mind as if it was an incident few days ago when I recollect it. I’ll never forget that day that made me realize that how terrible it’s being poor.
Instantaneously, It was hard to cope with this reality that someone I saw few days ago was the last time, I was seeing that person; that girl’s sister who was a year older than her, though relatively darker than her fair sister, but having lots of emotions, simplicity and unsaid sadness in her beautiful brown eyes, of belonging to helpers’ community or the servants class and daily digesting the helplessness of not being able to afford the toys and other unspoken stigmas of not being able to be friends with the middle income groups girls of her age, or looking at them playing in their comfortable playing areas with the unfulfilled hope of being asked to join the game while standing outside the boundaries of those playing areas.
The idea of any child belonging to a poor family always used to haunt me in terms of feeling very guilty under my own capacity of not being able to help deprived people and asking this question to myself that what has that child done to deserve such a life and under who’s responsibility come such people and why is there any poverty existing at first place.
Over the period of time, while learning the hard realities of life, this inequality equation still seems like a mystery puzzle that finds justification through various economic and social concepts. After that, I realized that I would never try to fall into that social economic class that gets denied the privilege of health and education rights, rather I would empower myself to become a source of help and guidance for the poor community.