Abandoned: End of a beginning?

Innumerable questions pound the walls of our mind.

Words in our poem no longer rhyme.

Why no one wants to take us home

or considers us as their own?

Why no one lends a loving hand

and lets us suffer on the barren land?

We seek neither a roof, nor a stack of grain 

Merely the sunshine of care in the season of rain.

As a desperate knock interrupts my thoughts, I roll down the glass to be greeted by imploring eyes of a poor child. My heart goes out to her but I cannot help wondering if she has chosen this path out of need or has been forced to do so. I hand her a penny and drive away as the signal turns green. We can reflect upon the condition of the underprivileged children clad in rags or pass our judgement about the misfortune but is that what we call a solution? Gaiety of the childhood has wandered off as the bereaved are left behind to search for remnants on the crowded streets. I had once come across a poor child who was hurrying off from one vehicle to the other, with the same set of words pouring out of his mouth, which I doubt even he could comprehend. A rehearsed speech lingers on the lips of underprivileged children as a practice needed to make one’s way through the streets where blessings and a glum demeanour are supposed to be the only means to earn money in the world of the poor.

Even though the act of child abandonment is a relatively common occurrence, it remains an understudied social phenomenon. Although, attention has been directed toward the understanding and combating of the numerous variations of child abuse and neglect, the problem of physical abandonment is rarely discussed but there are children still left in parks and street corners. It is a pity that they are treated merely as property that can be thrown away or disowned.

A child permanently bereaved of his or her parents embodies a house without a roof, a sapling without its roots, drought awaiting raindrops to quench its thirst where life is nothing more than a vastly spread desert, where time has come to a standstill for innocent lives.

Today afternoon I stopped on the way in a roadside shack to fill my stomach. But, my heart just sank as I sat surrounded by a throng of poor children, starved of care or food, as I savoured the delicacies. I left a tip and hurried off. In the evening I sat comfortably in the sanctuary of my room and a long lost memory revisited me. On a sweltering day last summer while I was heading back home, I was oblivious of the fact that a small girl was standing beside my auto rickshaw. With pleading eyes she merely stared at me without demanding any money and I came to know of it when the lights turned green and I started moving ahead. Her eyes have never left my mind since that day when I was lost in my own world and the child who was far away from the essence of life. We can be really selfish at times.

Many a times at an age when the children are not even aware of the meaning of parents, they are left bereft of the parental care and love to whom they had clung on to and as a result now the only thing to whom they can cling to is their own selves as even fate has been responsible for their betrayal. The toys that their hands deserved have been replaced by the ones that have been discarded, found in the garbage heaps. They are basically deprived of family care and protection and families from poor social welfare systems who are more likely to abandon them.

They may even question whether they could have contributed to the absence, whether they somehow "deserved" to be abandoned, or whether the absent parent believes he or she is better off without the "burden" of a child. Children who have experienced parental abandonment may also have difficulty sharing their feelings and make efforts to keep their emotions bottled up and lack the trust necessary to share their true selves with others. They tend to relate to other oppressed individuals from the streets as they can easily relate to them but trusting the ones who are not worth trusting clearly has a hand in introduction of a menace to the endangered society.

Abandonment does not necessarily need to be physical. Intangible abandonment is equally heart wrenching and challenging to cope up with that is even more harmful for the minds of the children which are easily mouldable. In a disturbed family environment where the children become either a victim of the abuse, both physical and mental or have to spend their time embodying a part of the furniture as silent witnesses dying a silent death in the presence of their guardians who are supposed to guard them emotionally from any harm. As the number of nuclear families is on the rise, the number of innocent lives at stake has increased. The family environment is endangered along with the mental peace of the members of the family where the children are left bereft of care, love, support and even a trace of attention from their caretakers for namesake. This contributes in increasing their shame and dilemma regarding the web of mishaps in which they are trapped to gather dust in a corner of the house. Children who have undergone such trauma may also be prone to developing poor self-esteem and a sense of shame surrounding the parent's absence. The children are capable of coping up with physical pain more than emotional trauma as a broken arm is easier to heal than a broken heart.

In order to feel safe even in an unsafe environment of broken homes, very young children use a subconscious defence mechanism called idealization. In other words, little kids put their parents up on a pedestal and see them as perfect, all-knowing, and all-powerful god-like creatures. Thus any disruption in the peace of the home responsible for abandonment results in the self-blame game. As all the faith in humanity diminishes, so does the faith in any good motives. Even the individuals who are genuinely interested in taking remedial measures are believed to have false intentions. The naive souls have a dilemma regarding the facts behind their abandonment by their kin and acceptance by the few people who are still humane in this inhuman world. 

It takes a fair amount of time for the neglected children to plant the saplings of faith under the sunlight of newfound love and care. They desire and secretly ache for affection and protection but are afraid to reach out or even accept the love that comes their way, completely. The individuals who intend to help are also looked upon as potential threat and that explains the turmoil of emotions within the vulnerable mind of the traumatised child. As they feel guilty for being abandoned they believe that the more the pain inflicted upon them the more will be their expression of repentance. In order to be punished they make persistent efforts to appear undisciplined.

Due to lack of proper nutrition there might be lack of vitamins too in the body of the child but the vitamin that the child requires the most is vitamin of love that remains out of bounds for the wounded soul. The distressed children do not wish to be treated as fallen leaves of autumn in the shade of the tree but as the fruits borne by the tree as its integral part originated from its own self.

We would neither hesitate to throw away the money to gorge on savoury food, nor falter from revamping our wardrobe. But when it comes to looking down upon the underprivileged, we do not let any opportunity pass by. Whether it is the downtrodden on the streets or the neglected residing in broken homes, all that they need is compassion, a charitable heart rather than a giving hand.

Whether it is the little girl, who sells the tricolour on the street beside the Parliament house or whether it is the boy, who runs barefoot over the scorching road to clean the windshields of the cars. Every one of them has a story; an untold and unknown account which has been unfortunately lost in the dust of the countless streets.

A girl came up to me last week when I was on my way back home. With doleful eyes she urged me to buy a set of pencils with an assurance that I would be blessed by God if I brought them.  Overwhelmed, I handed her a penny as I took the pencils from her, but made an effort to appear nonchalant. Deep in my heart I asked God to bless the little one who spared her share of blessings for the people who offered her a penny of joy. I looked around at the throng of people amidst the commotion on the streets. 

My thoughts shifted to the people who must be trying to make sense of the pieces of the puzzle, fallen apart in the place that they would never be able to call home. Would they ever relate to the people living on the streets and come forward to lend a helping hand or will they lose themselves in the corners of their room. Abandoned.