Compassion by Heart

Before writing this blog I never knew what compassion is in reality. Whether it is necessarily or unnecessarily helping people in their problems or it is showing true affection to them. What I think that compassion is something done truly from heart to pull troublesome people out of their miseries.

We well civilized people are often annoyed when forced to face unwanted crowd of children begging besides roads, traffic signals, bus stands , railway station, public places, temples, mosques and even at our doors! Children shivering under open sky with merely few inches of clothes on their body are forced to labor without their consent. I usually observe surrounding carefully while travelling by train. General Coaches as well as railway stations are always crowded with beggars.  Most of them are children of varying age groups. We never know that the thing which drives these kids to do such a pity job is their hollow abdomen. These children with empty stomachs are prone to get engulfed by so called mafias and dons who trap them from footpath and slums to force them to beg in public places and make huge sum of money. In return these children receive none other than half a cake. These children are forced to live in extreme poverty and hunger. 

These children are very much like our own. They also have similar eyes, nose, ears and everything like our own children. They have similar dreams like our own kids when they sleep on thorny beds. They have similar desires of having toys, going to school, playing games, wearing new clothes and most importantly they want to have at least a square meal a day.

 They also have, like our own kids, a right to live a better life. They also have right to dream a better future. They also have right to get enough food. They are not given birth to die starving painfully. They are not brought to this planet to live only miserable life. They need extreme compassion by heart.

They are future of a nation. They grow into future generation and have to become most empowered gentle persons building social and cultural foundation for their future beings. Unlike other animals, an infant needs extreme care, love and support of its parents until it becomes young and independent. A child needs good feeding with enough nutritional supplements. But a major fraction of children in this world are not getting enough food for their survival. 

"There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”

                                                          Mahatma Gandhi.

     Well said by Mahatma Gandhi, a bitter truth that must be accepted by the world. It is well known that almighty God has provided all the resources necessary to ensure that no one ever leaves with empty stomach. We have sufficient food on this planet to provide every person with a square meal per day. God has done his job of taking care of the supply side of the hunger equation and the rest of the solution is up to us. The basic problem of hunger is distribution. Hunger exists only because we human beings permit it. Best and only solution to this problem to enhance feeling of compassion among able people who can help to provide food to such a vulnerable population.

It is really shocking that even after enough food on earth over 300 million children go to bed hungry every day and almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes per day. That's one child every five seconds. According to the report of the UN World Food Programme more than 27 per cent of the world’s undernourished population lives in India, of whom 43 per cent children (under five years) are underweight. Nearly 50 per cent of child deaths in India occur due to malnutrition.

 India indeed is the world’s hunger capital. A hungry world is a dangerous world and without food, people have only three options: They uproar, they beg for mercy or they die. None of these are acceptable options.

The Vedic scriptures of India provide us with some insight into the nature of compassion and spirituality:

“Everything animate or inanimate being that is within the universe is controlled and owned by the Lord. One should therefore accept only those things necessary for himself, which are set aside as his quota, and one should not accept other things, knowing well to whom they belong.” 

Overcome with voracious greed, however, modern society blindly destroys the earth of valuable resources, and thus robs billions of people in developing countries of their God-given “quota” of food. You people are the key to the end of hunger. You make the difference. Major changes have been taken place in the world that were initiated not by governments or powerful institutions, but rather by people - individuals. Every individual is responsible for generating the profound changes to end child hunger by true feeling of compassion. Such movement have to be initiated and sustained by each individual among us. Children are innocent, immature. They cannot start such a movement in their own defence. Could any cause be counted more worthy of a people's movement? Thus we can play a vital role in this global effort. 

We must pledge to help free children from the vicious cycle of hunger and poverty by connecting compassionate people in world. We must develop a deep concern for the plight of impoverished children living in extreme poverty in the world. Come and together raise awareness about poverty, hunger and compassion.

 “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."                                                                                                                                

 - Margaret Mead