Slumdogs

I see them every few days. Maimed beyond recognition, their eyes gouged out, their hands spread out in supplication, are the only active parts of their anatomy. They are children, a little boy and a little girl. Humans, yet so cruelly carved up by a butcher’s knife they defy the definition of humanity. From time to time I drop some packets of food into their hands. Their unseeing eyes register nothing. Often they pass the packets to the man seated next to them. Is he their father or their trader? He looks equally disfigured but I can’t help the surge of anger against him for not protecting the children or worse, forcing them into such a life. Appropriately they live their doomed lives on a street corner that intersects the quintessential government colony of Delhi on the one side and a tony South Delhi district on the other. Occupants of the first let them down with their corruption and inefficiency; the second merely by their apathy. What’s their only hope: an early merciful death?