Shame

Those ominous grey clouds hanging low on the sky, threatened to shroud everything into an early darkness. The gloomy view reflected my mood too. An amorphous pain had been growing inside me ever since I saw the bandaged dead face of nine year old Sameer. The shrill cry of his mother had echoed inside me throughout the day as the splintered emotion spread through my body. I left work early trying to shut myself behind the silence of closed glass windows as I drove back home. The cacophony within continued to grow. The pain now condensed into a large black hole on my chest and the disquiet was slowing turning into anger and disgust.

As I stopped at the traffic light, I heard a familiar tap on the window. A small boy stood there with a few small flags in his hand pointing one towards me. I looked at the flag and felt a sharp conflict erupting in my mind as I turned my face towards the other side perhaps to hide my rancor. Oblivious to the acrimony I felt towards him, the boy persisted with another tap and a meek smile. This time I noticed his earnest eyes. And this time I detested myself. Perhaps my feelings were no different from the uniformed man who had beaten Sameer to death. Both had ascribed a status, an ideology to these little boys that they did not understand. The truth of this made me feel nauseated.

I looked at the boy again, at the torn pocket of his shirt, at this disheveled hair, at his ignorance of the bigger uglier world around him. Perhaps there was something common between him and Sameer. Perhaps he could have been Sameer and Sameer could have been him. Perhaps the names didn’t matter. Perhaps it was their lost innocence. Perhaps it was the mischief of their age. Perhaps it was the hypocrisy we had build around them. Perhaps it was their future that we claimed to decide for them. Perhaps it was the concept of freedom that they did not understand. Perhaps it was their carefree childhood. Perhaps it is our divisive hearts. Perhaps it was humanity. Perhaps the way it is strangulated at every street corner. Perhaps it is shame that we owe to them.

I felt a scream coming out of me letting go of a burden. I rolled down the window and spread out my hand letting a few drops of rain wash it. Now I felt clean again