Baskadia

It was June 1947. I had just returned home from my daily errands when the knok at the door perplexed me to the core.

And thus to my mind's subtler point there stood a boy with a bowl in his hand. He was a professional beggar who wanted to mint money out of begging in that way. I asked him to come inside my snug house of red brick abode built sumptuous living.

So he came up to me and sat there puzzled himself at my hospitality.

But once he was inside my dinning room, I made him go upstairs to the washroom and he changed his clothes to a steady poise in movements of his footfall on the wooden floor, which creaked every time his feet struck it

His presence in the room was imminent and he started to eat food with me. A frugal meal it was and then suddenly my daughter came and said in low tone voice of voice "who is this dirty boy and why he is having food with us? Please send him away as I feel aversion and disgust for him".

In the meal while other inmates of the house started to pour in, in great rapidity. And no one noticed the dirty boy having food by the table.

Then quite unexpected, my mother noticed him in a paroxysm of rage and said, "please turn this little boy out of the house this very second. We don't know who he is. May be a robber in disguise of a needy poor child"

Consequently her suble reasoning made sense and I turned him out forthwith.

Though I was grief stricken with compunction, but that moment's agony stayed with me perpetually until this day and even today I feel sorry for all those little mendicants who are forced to beg instead of going to school.