Letters flashed before my fiery eyes. I grimaced with exasperation bubbling inside me, like magma erupting down the steep sides of a giant volcano that hollered with agony, piercing the Prussian blue skies.

Mum had propped me on a stiff, wooden chair here to read her favourite author as the thrilling visions of me swirling my brush into the rainbow array of paint pots came rushing back to me. I implored mum once again if I could attend my art class, but she nodded her head in dejection and eyed the street school she had always dreamt of making.

It was obviously a waste of time to dabble with paintbrushes; my art indecipherable and meaningless to her. To her, it was some scrawls and doodles of an impertinent child!

Loud, harsh voices engulfed the lacklustre and bleak surroundings as the teachers cursed the dust that etched into their feet and the giddy scents of the culvert nearby showered them, their noses twitching in resentment. A boy appeared on the dusty, paved road as the barbaric ball of fire ascended to its rightful throne and jeered at the impoverished boy below. Little did it know that this boy was more consummate than most.

My mum beckoned him closer and I took a look at his scarred face. My eyes caught sight of the rags that tried to cover his body. The patches of bright coloured clothing stitched onto a tattered grey fabric had an uncanny resemblance to the sidewalk that had marked his feet forever, like a digital footprint, never quite vanishing from his heart.

The fabric seemed to have been ripped apart, like his life had been so cruelly ripped when he opened his eyes as a curious boy, only to see poverty drowning his cries of help. His bones stood out and his hair was a filthy and greasy mess.

His eyes filled with yearning as he held the first book in his hand that my mother gave him, tenderly touching the cover and staring in frustration when the mud on his hands scarred the paper. His calloused hands were in stark contrast to the soft velvety touch of the book as he reached out to look at the words of the lantern that would soon light the path to his life. It was his eyes that intrigued me the most.

“Those are pearls that were his eyes,” Shakespeare’s words resonated somewhere deep within me. They were eyes of experience, bleakness and agony, of tales that remain unheard, of whips, of jeers and of famine, of sufferings and of being silenced, unable to complain, unable to see the world with eyes of longing. They gleamed golden underneath the sun’s monotonous exposure that had made them stronger from the outside, but had ripped his heart in two.

Unheard, unkempt and unloved, he roamed. Purposelessness and hopelessness gnawing and painfully sucking his lifeless soul.

His bare feet mingled with the gilded sand and his blackened hands told agonising tales of years of drudgery beyond what his age should have permitted. With all these imperfections ringing out from within him, I was astonished to witness a smile brightening his face as he eagerly touched and read out one letter. Others like him started filling the chairs and they all held books and talked to each other with excitement adorning their faces.

I looked silently at him, reaching out for the books which would change his future and the path to his life filled with agony and sufferings. But at that moment I had an epiphany. The boy did not have the luxuries I had. I wore a sparkling dress. I groaned on hot days. I lived in a house and I went to a proper school where I was respected and admired.

These children thought of education merely as a dream floating around on thin air that couldn’t be grasped by their tired hands. Even though I had so much more to be grateful about than these children, these small minds knew of freedom, freedom which my heart yearned for!

Their tattered clothes were able to feel the wind as they ran with no limitations, whereas I was cooped up, with a book forcefully shoved into my hands. Their faces opened with laughter as they were closer to their family and friends than I could ever be. Because at that moment, when the sun lifted up from above the clouds and cast a glare on my face, I realised that I was skating on a thin icy path construed by expectations, standards and dreams, whereas this boy will one day walk on a path of his own choice and free will.

Published in Dawn, Young World, February 26th, 2022