Originally posted on: 5 Jan 2011. This is an incidence from our college times.

We had just finished watching movie and were standing with our bikes outside City-Pride, one of the movie theatres in Pune. We were discussing about further plans when one kid walked to me n started begging. I felt extremely bad.. :( now, I had that inner feeling of not giving him the money just like that n see him getting converted into ‘beggar’ – he looked to bright for it. I had tvs-scooty with me in those days, I rememebered having a piece of cleaning cloth in my scooty’s under-seat storage. I opened it, giving that piece to him n said – “clean the scooty n I will give u 5 bucks !!”. I was expecting him to walk away, as most of the beggars I have observed, dont want to work. But, he agreed !! Now here comes the twist, that piece of cloth was actually my room-mates complete shirt.. my room-mate weighted 45kgs then, 52kgs now :) .. within a second when that kid picked up the cloth, he realized that this shirt can fit him well. He asked me – “dada, can I take this?”, I said yes. In a flash he removed dirty shirt he was wearing and put on my room-mates old, discarded shirt. Just when I thought this interaction is over n he no more wants 5 bucks from me, he started cleaning my scooty with his old,dirty shirt which was then in his hands.. I was pleasantly surprised !! :) He didn’t take 5 bucks I offered him..

Today, pseudo-randomly, question popped up to my mind – what is better? child beggar or child labor?? n I remembered this many years back insidence, wondering where that kid would be now, n what he would be doing.. Hopefully, I helped one kid converting from child beggar into child labor.. :)