At Five O'clock in the Morning.

During the cold winter of the 2011, I was traveling home by a train in a comfortable compartment. It was five o’clock in the morning when I woke up rubbing my eyes and trying to see out of the window. I got up and left my compartment, yawning and thinking about the beauty of the morning. The train arrived at a small platform full of serenity and peace. Though I felt cold, I inhaled the breeze of the morning.

A voice suddenly drew my attention, “Do you need cigarettes, tobacco, pan maslals or anything else?” An eight-year-old boy with bare feet and torn shirt was trying to sell his stuff to me. I was shocked and bothered at that moment and became very pensive. Then another came, then one more, then yet another. They surrounded me. They were all the same age. They were carrying heavy tobacco bags around their necks. They could hardly stand on their feet. It was a terrible situation for they were all around me shouting, murmuring, gossiping and whispering.

I thought, “What should I do?” I decided to ask their names. They told me, yet they were angry. One of them muttered, “Why is he wasting our time?

Why do you do such a lowly job?” I asked the smallest boy while putting my hand gently on his shoulder,

“Would you leave me?” He rose up on his toes. “What a foolish question,” he said.

“Spoiled the mood early in the morning,” another child uttered. “Will you purchase or not, why are you asking such childish questions?” I said, “O.K. I will; I will purchase one packet of cigarettes from each of you, but you have to answer me.” One of them came forward and said, “Well! If you want, let me answer. I know what you want to hear. Of course we desire to have the best clothes, delicious foods, luxurious lives, and excellent knowledge, fabulous surroundings, and healthy minds, wonderful gardens full of roses, where we would play and enjoy but how, O cranky man? With almost no money and dirty appearances? Who will stop our hunger? Who will feed us? Who will extinguish the fire inside us? You may ask about our fathers, parents and guardians. Some of us have some of us not. If we have they don’t care. My father smokes, drinks and beats my mother.

I was quite exasperated and felt very anguished. My naked eyes could not merely see those four kids, but in fact I could imagine hundreds of thousands of such kids around me and they all were asking me questions. I was trying to stop listening but I failed miserably.

The moving wheels of the train grabbed my attention. I jumped back on and rushed to my seat, but could not sleep again. I was worried, but hopeful. The incident gave birth to many ideas, but how to change them into reality? Could I do it alone, or did I need a team to help me reach my goal? I found inspiration in an ancient Chinese proverb, “A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”. Since then I found the motivation to reach my goal. It became a mission to accomplish.

I found the answer; it was a beam of knowledge that would shed the light of awareness and save the children.

“Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world” Nelson Mandela. If we can educate them, we can give them the weapon to change the world with knowledge and wisdom and then we eradicate child labor in shorter time.