I believe I left certain stories unfinished in my last blog. Precisely, the one about Aadil and whatever happened to him later. So coming straight to it, after my first lone visit to the place I got a call a week later from Aadil (he has learnt my number!) and he said he also needed the school uniform for going to school. The right to free education this is. Anyways, we needed around 600-700 for it and many of my wonderful classmates contributed for this. We got him the school uniform and that night going back to sleep, I felt immensely happy. I mean that was just one kid, who could go to school with the efforts of others, and I was filled with hope that we can do this for so many and then imagine if they study, learn and grow up to be good citizens having a good life. It’s all so beautiful.

But then that’s utopia. We had our October break at college and I also had to go back to Bihar for Chhath Puja, so that made up for an absence of around a month. Then after coming back all the tests, pending work and exams were lined up. I was planning to go however. On making a call to Aadil, his mother informed he has left school, had a fight with his brother and is selling balloons.

I felt ashamed of myself for failing to go there or contact them, was shocked and surprised that Aadil, who was so excitedly taking us to the uniform shops so he can wear them and go to school could ever do this. I am not sureif the intensity of that disappointment can ever be expressed in words but giving up is never an option. I decided to go there the very next day. So Ishani and I did go to meet him.

We were a little late, he had already made rounds at the place we meet before we came, so now we had to wait for him. It was difficult to recognise him. He saw us, and hid his face while smiling around, he somewhere maybe knew he was wrong. Anyways, he was much more skinny than before, clad in torn clothes with a school bag that had goodies that he sold and with certain injuries on his face, and numerous cut marks on his wrist.

Out of all the perceptible differences in his physical appearance, the last one on his wrist infuriated me as well as frightened me to the extreme. He is JUST A KID! On asking why he did this, he said he was seeking peace. I was speechless. He had had a fight with his elder brother Arif over some money, he went to the policemen stationed there and complained to them,  denied of Arif being his brother and his mother being his mother. And then he was blabbering about all the rubbish of him being somebody else’s child and that he was picked up from somewhere. Okay this part was funny, so many of us have thought of this at one point or another!

However, he was a very different person and it is so difficult to take in all of these changes in a matter of a month. There was an anger in him, that didn’t exist before, he was harsh, intolerant, impatient and rude. It took in lot of patience and coaxing to talk to him and convince him about getting back to school and how wrong he was. But there was a point during those conversations I felt like giving up, like it won’t work. But it did, it did. And I know it did because Love is a powerful weapon after all. He stopped selling balloons that very day and I hope he did go to school, he promised us he will. I am hopeful, starting this January I will be able to much more substantial stuff for him and others alike.

Now this time, what happened was there were a group of other kids who were all so excited to see us and stuff and we had decided we would celebrate Ishani’s birthday partly with them in advance. So we took them for a treat and after touring around numerous shops stopped at a grocery shop and asked them what they would like to have. Our greatest mistake ever! Ishani very kindly stood aside and started talking to Aadil while I was left alone to manage their demands. I mean, that was an utter nuisance and believe me I have extreme levels of patience with most people, but I lost mine by the end of their shopping. They just can’t be satisfied with the stuff they got, they will be complaining about how the other one got a packet more or one that was bigger. One of them started crying by the end of it for this. One returned all the stuff half-heartedly because I didn’t pay heed to her complaints, but thankfully took that back later. And after all of this they went back and again had a good fight.

So, somehow it was a sort of a happy ending to the day. The kind of violence these children are growing up in is disturbing, they burn each other’s eyes when angry, I mean is that even believable to us? So many movies are shot around the area, a lot of tourists from around the world come to this historical place, Delhi tourism posters boasts of Jama Masjid as being the largest mosque in India, shouldn’t it also be their responsibility to give back something to this place by developing the area, improving sanitatiion, giving good education to the children and run skill development programmes for the youth? Somebody has to look back on these aspects, take responsibility for these. But I also know the government can’t do everything, I will certainly do my bit for the place that gives me so much of peace, for the kids who give me so much joy.

I would end with something beautiful that had happened that day. Aadil had asked Ishani what her religion is, and later he also asked mine so that he could apparently fit this information it into his understanding of the differences between our religions but later in the day he said, he no more finds any difference between our religions.

That’s when love and humanity won over the artificial differences between people.