GOLD – NEED NOT ALWAYS GLITTER

It was a Saturday morning, so I was in my bed till 7. When the sun came out to wake me up, I awoke with my mind fixed on the ASHES. It had started two days back and the previous night I could not see the score since I was very late. I switched on the NDTV not knowing that GOD was planning to teach me an age old adage “All that glitters is not gold”.

The NDTV showed two pictures which was played in my mind again and again throughout the day. One, a beautiful young lady covering her face from the camera, the other, A small girl whose face is blurred by the camera to hide her identity. The story goes like this. The young lady, must be in her late twenties or early thirties, Mother of two small kids, a television actress; she had promised the small girl’s parents that she will make that kid study. The kid’s parents anticipating a brighter future for their child accepted the lady’s offer and there stands the small kid, her face half burnt, eyes red, legs trembling and hands with her skin peeled off. It was tragic to watch that sight. Absolutely tragic. The lady had tortured the girl for six months. What exactly had happened, nobody knows, except of course the girl and that television actress. But what came out was that the girl was not given food for a long time and in her hunger the girl tried to open the refrigerator and take some food. The lady seeing this threw hot water on the girl and beat her with tongs. I have heard such things happen in the ancient India and in some parts of the world where slavery was rampant…………but such an incident happening in the ultra modern world, that too by the modern day woman and sadly by a mother of two!!! I just could not comprehend where we have gone wrong. Freeze that picture in your mind…….

The day after that I met another character………An old lady, should be in her 70’s. She is the first wife of a drunkard…….First wife!!!! That man has married three times. He always beats his wives so much every day after drinking. That man’s third wife bore him a daughter and she was a mentally retarded girl. To rub salt on the already swollen wound, the mentally retarded girl was raped and bore a son. Now comes the hero of the story. The old lady started looking after the small boy, the grandson of her husband’s third wife. When all that she had done all her life is to get beatings from her own husband, after seeing her husband marry two other girls, after living in absolute poverty for almost the entire life and by the time most would have given up on life she decides to grow up a small boy, by no means a simple job. She stood up and said “I will help this kid to be a good citizen”. I will give him everything so that he will be a better human being………My mind refused to accept. The old lady was not supposed to do this??? Wasn’t she??? I have heard tales of children being harassed by step mothers……….but this lady??? Is she not living among the same poor women who sell children to live??? When she stood up I know I cannot sit down……..that picture of that frail old lady taking an oath that she will produce a good human being for the world was frozen in my mind…….

Two characters crossed my mind those two days. One is beautiful, a television actress living in the hub of Mumbai in a posh apartment. She could afford everything she wants, in the peak of her career, having two lovely little children. The other, a old lady, having lived all her life in a broken village in the southern part of the country, seeing her husband marry two more ladies, getting beaten physically day in and day out. On any day I will want the first one……but guess what???? The old lady is growing a small child teaching him, that one day he should serve the nation and the beautiful young lady beating a small girl just because she could do so……….I don’t want to say this, and I don’t want this to happen either………but I believe the two small children of the Television actress growing up with whatever they had wanted in the High rise buildings of Mumbai are going to do as much harm to the nation as their mother has done………And I say this with a fair degree of confidence, that the small kid growing in the village hut having nothing to boast about will do more good than harm….

I know “All that glitters are not gold”. But on that day I learnt that “GOLD – Need not always glitter”. The young lady glittered but…….she is not the real gold. The “REAL GOLD” is the old woman, who actually had never ever glittered.