The summer vacation had drawn to a close and we had just returned from our trip abroad. Excitedly, we dived straight into the details of our trip after greeting our grandpa, who had been visiting our ancestral village while we were away. Now that the beautiful vacation was already over, I dreaded what lay ahead — another school year.

Dreading anything, however, doesn’t stop it from happening and soon arrived the first day of yet another academic session. Before you start thinking there was something majorly wrong as to why I was dreading going back to school, there wasn’t any big problem with school ­— just the waking up every morning at 6am sharp, the back-to-back classes and the same dull, old routine of a school day were what I found boring.

I know every student will agree with the above-listed reasons and sympathise with me, but unexpected things can happen anytime and change one’s perspective so let me tell you how an event following my first day at school this year changed my views about school.

Carrying an overloaded bag seems like you are carrying the burden of the whole world. Moving on with heavy steps, I was on the way to school when suddenly something caught my attention. I saw a crowd of people gathered staring something in the middle. I quickly rushed towards the crowd to find out what was going on.

Once I reached the crowd, I saw a man holding the hand of an untidy young girl with unwashed hair that clung to her scalp. But underneath the grime, she was pretty. The man was shouting at her and she stood with her head down, frequently wiping sweat off her face.

I tried hard to understand the situation. Suddenly someone from the crowd shouted, “Call the police and hand her over to them. She is a thief and must get her punishment.”

The girl appeared too young to be arrested, so with the help of a lady I successfully managed to take her away from the crowd. I gave her some water and asked her to relax and not be scared.

“I’m not a thief, but I belong to a poor family,” she finally spoke. “I don’t go to school and what I tried to steal from a shop was a book, because I have no money to pay for it,” she explained. “You are so lucky that you go to school,” she added looking at my uniform.

After saying that, she slowly walked away, but thoughts about her lingered in my mind all day. That was the day when I realised that many children do not have the option of going to school. I thought of how we complain about everything without realising that what we are complaining about might be a dream for other children. I also thought of how other children who do not have a chance to dream of a future any different from their present, while I switch from an option of choosing one profession to another by studying so many subjects in my class.

That day, I realised what I would like to do in future. I would surely dedicate my life to remove poverty and strive towards education for all so that there would be only one type of children, those who travel in a school bus with their little burden of books only.

Published in Dawn, Young World, April 25th, 2020