Broken Childhood and Mended Late in My Story

Thank you Meera Om Ji and Shalini Pandey Ji for inspiring me to tell one incident from my life.

It was the year 1997-1998 when I was in standard 3 I suppose. My sister and I used to walk to school with our heavy bags (really twice our sizes). Very little, so small, I went on the looks of my mother, while my sister resembled father a lot. Those innocent days were when kindness was full-on in our hearts. I remember that my pocket money was Rs 3 at that time. The price of one roti was Rs 1 and the remaining Rs 2, I used to buy sweet tamarind candy and dried raisins.

It so happened that an elderly woman used to walk and ask people for money. One such day she approached us while we were going to school and asked us for some money so that she could buy a piece of bread and might visit her son who was in the hospital. We were so overwhelmed that both of us combined our pocket money and gave it all to her. I remember feeling so light that she would be able to feed herself. And prayed that her sufferings end assuming that God listened to small angels. When we used to visit mawsi, she very lovingly gave us Rs 25 each time. That was a huge huge sum of money for a small kid. I used to dream of saving them to buy an electric car or any toy. My chacha had a huge RC car that worked with remote control. There were two boys, me and my cousin, while all others were girls in the family. However, chacha never let me play with it. He used to show off, but he would let my cousin play. I was so sad at that time. I didn’t know what anger was, so I just cried. And used to dream of buying my own.

Now that woman would approach us every day. Now we had Rs 25 each and our pocket money. So we had Rs 56 and we gave it all to her. That day was when our little soul experienced betrayal. She just went unabashedly in the shop, bought a bottle of alcohol and cigarettes and started on without delay. That day neither I nor my sister cried. I don’t know what occurred but we were hurt, betrayed and we never helped anyone after that, until we were in college.

Fast forward to the present, I still don’t have an RC car. Om Swami Ji, Chantal Didi, my unknown Well Wisher and the ‘os support team’ have taught me once again what kindness represents. Thank you very much. Os.me family, you are truly the best.