Being raised in an upper middle-class family, I had heard of poverty and hunger but had never seen or experienced it at any point in my life. Till that unusual day.
That day, I had plans of catching up with my gang of girls. We had planned to meet for lunch, followed by some shopping in T. Nagar, in my hometown Chennai. My friends and I were enjoying our holidays after four years of engineering college. The fact that we had landed plush jobs at IT companies gave us an added reason to celebrate.
Being used to the holiday (read, lazy) mode, I was frightfully late that day.
I boarded the train at Villivakkam, and as usual the ladies compartment was bursting with people. I pushed myself through into the compartment and found a place on the other side of the entrance.
Standing in front of me was a lady who seemed like a daily wage worker. She was carrying an infant in her arms, while holding on to two of her other children.
The train had crossed Vyasarpadi station when I suddenly realised that the baby had stopped crying. Out of curiosity, I peeked to look at the baby and found that the mother was feeding it.
When I looked closely, to my horror, I found that she wasn’t feeding the baby milk or a food item, but it was a piece of brick. Yes, red brick. The kind that is used for construction purposes. She was hiding the brick under her sari, so it was not very apparent or obvious and didn’t garner her any attention. I noticed that the baby was ravenously licking at the brick and had stopped crying, as if it was used to doing so.
Minutes flew by without my realisation as I was numb with shock, and the train was already at my destination – Central.
As the train came to a halt, I quickly got off it and rushed to the station canteen. I bought a packet of biscuits, while keeping an eye on the lady and her children, lest I lost her in the milling peak hour crowd.
I reached out and handed her the packet of biscuits. Confused, she just blankly looked at me. There was already a lump in my throat throughout the incident and I was almost reaching a tipping point where I would burst into tears any moment. I didn’t want her to see that, so I quickly turned away after handing her the packet.
That day, I realised what hunger really is and what it does to human life. All those times that I had wasted food; my mother’s pleas about valuing food; all those leisurely meals during restaurant visits; everything was flashing through my mind.
I know I cannot feed every hungry child in this world, neither can I promise four square meals to every nursing mother, but I know that if I stop wasting food, someone somewhere will get that morsel.
