“Eww!” exclaimed 15-year-old Sara, a tall rosy-cheeked girl as her cropped jeans were splashed with another huge glob of opaque water, the colour of earth.

‘Why did I ever volunteer to come to this dirty place?’ reflected Sara, as she surveyed her surroundings and looked with apparent disgust at the dirty partially dressed kids, playing blithely, immersed deeply in their self-created games. In the background, thatched huts made of mud jostled crowdedly, deeply rutted alleys created an interconnecting network between the ghetto and the main road and over all of this, the thick haze of burning garbage hung.

Sara’s school had asked students to volunteer for the collection of charity and visit a slum to distribute it. Sara had immediately volunteered, not because of goodwill but to gain credits in her report book.

Now standing near a foul smelling drain canal, she thoroughly regretted her decision while the other students took pictures of the place. Getting immensely bored, she took the accompanying teacher’s permission and wandered off aimlessly, away from the group. As she walked about, the scorching sun glared at her.

Suddenly the barren heat was too much to bear, the cruel drone of flies caused her mind to swirl around in circles — the reek, the suffocating and obliterating dust, swirling, swirling and then blank, nothing, just a far-off thump resounding in Sarah’s ears.

Sara opened her eyes to the hum of the ceiling fan. The feel of a cool damp cloth on her forehead reinvigorated her mind.

“My beti (daughter) has woken up, bring water for the darling,” croaked a woman so wizened out and wrinkled.

Sara sat up in a state of shock — where was she? What happened? Where were her school mates? All these questions ricocheted off from her brain and issued from her mouth as a garbled groan.

“Poor girl,” the woman continued in her raspy voice. “What if Bablu would not have spotted her, she would have been trampled by those rowdy children for sure.”

Without paying any heed to these words, Sara jumped off the bed for her eyes had finally found what they were searching for — the door to escape. She bolted at it, wrenched it open and began to run towards the direction of the far-off canal, its grimy water glistening under the evening sun. As she came out in the open, she saw the school group groggily making its way back to the van, the teacher taking the head-count. Sara slipped in unnoticed; nobody had noticed her absence, making it easier for her not to make up excuses for where she was all this while.

Later, in the car with her father, she related the incident to him. While doing so, she fumbled in her pocket for her iPhone — there was nothing in it. She boiled with rage.

“Those thieves!” she shouted. “I knew these people living in places like these …. How dare they steal my phone!” she spat vehemently.

Her father’s eyebrows were raised in surprise and shock.

“Now, now, calm down! Calling all the poor people thieves is generalisation. It’s not fair to those honest, hardworking people who try to improve their conditions, their living standards, but it’s actually people like us who don’t give them chances and make assumptions that all of them are the same — until they also give up and turn fraudulent and criminal for money,” he said seriously with a frown on his face.

And then on a gentler note asked, “Are you sure your iPhone is not there in your bag, darling?”

“Yes, it’s absolutely not there, too!” replied Sara.

“What if you did not take it with you?” asked her father.

“No, I am absolutely sure, I did. People like these are always dishonest, they must have taken it!” said Sara, showing that her father’s little lecture did not bother or affect her in the least.

With that they reached home. She leapt up the stairs to quickly reach her room and use her laptop to post on Twitter her current status. As she opened the door of her room, her eyes fell on her bed where her laptop was, but right beside it, her iPhone lay. She heaved a sigh of relief but a second later she was overwhelmed with unease.

Hanging her head down with shame, she approached her father lounging in the sitting room and told that the phone had been in her room all along. She had forgotten to take it with her. She was reprimanded by her father and truly felt awful and horrible. Her huge ego had been burst by the needle of remorse.

From that day on she learned the lesson to never badmouth or make conjectures of human nature on the petty basis of status, poverty, richness etc. She discarded her prejudiced point of view and volunteered to help the poor people not for ulterior motives but out of sheer goodwill, keeping in her mind the quote of F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Whenever you feel like criticising anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had.”

Published in Dawn, Young World, June 11th, 2016