Musing on India - Part 3: Four sisters

I ended my previous post with the phrase "False beauty is only skin deep..."
Likewise, true beauty is endless...

For any country I travel thru,
no mountain view can take my breath away,
no river descent leaves me gasping,
no dew-dripping leaves can grab my heart,
as does the glister in a child's eyes,
the curl of a child's smile,
and endless echoing sound
of its laughter
and song.

Children are the true joy,
the true future.
The only purity we have left.

Here are four sisters, daughters of Mohammed, a dairy farmer in Punjab. He has forty buffaloes. But he would sell them all, he said, if that could give his daughters a good education, and a job in the city.

But luck was not with him. Nor with his girls. They did not get the opportunity to go to school, limiting their options in the future.

How the crib in which you were born, decides what you can become in life.

Maybe one of these girls could have been a doctor. Maybe one would have become a famous poet or a singer, or a politician, or a peacemaker. Maybe one would have invented a new drug that eradicated malaria. If only they'd have the chance to go to school.


(to be continued...)

PS: While I was publishing this post, Latika's theme played through my mind. (mp3 - 4 Mb)