These Rosebuds will Not Bloom ?
By Prof.) Bhupinder Singh Sehgal
The rainbow springs its seven colours over the fountain in the rose-garden. There is an aura of
Smiles on the faces of roses-white rose,yellow rose ,pink rose and red rose. The festival day is
Here again.A relief from monotony , a take off for the gregarious spiriots , the lilting tunes , the ballons, the exhibition of cut flowers, pots and an
Assortment of fashionable beaus and belles. As Chaucer would have said, ‘Here is God’s plenty?” Yes , here is happiness spreading its wings and touching every lip , caressing every cheek and the budding children.
But does happiness spring on the face of the millions of the poor children? The poverty stares at the face of the little rosebuds. The squalor and the dirt, malnutrition and adversity; the skeleton faces of little kids, the infant sucking at the milkless breasts of their emaciated mothers, the kids who never learn A,B,C, the teen aged boys and girls slogging for long hours in factories . The lisping kid washing greasy utensils in a cheap hotel, the bare-footed,bare headed kids of the slum areas yearn for a fleeting smile.
Why are some children flowers that whither ?
Why are there sobs to be heard in the por homes? Why does the dust fill the eyes of some infants? Why is the fragrance of the rose garden not wafted everywhere? Why is the alphabef\t a jumbled puzzle for many little kids? Why are the proteins and carbohydrates alien words for the under nourished ? why is despondency writ large on ghettoes of India,Asian countries, SOUTH Africa, and even some Western countries ? The children cry all the world over. Why does the cry not reach us ?
There are many regions of conflicts in the world . The children of South Africa are crushed undetr the heels of racial superiority. Apartheid in South Africa has suffocated infant ambitions. Infant and child mortality rates in Angola and Mozambique are now estimated to the highest in the world. The tragic consequence is that every four minutes a child who would have lived is dying in Angola and Mozambique.There are pockets of extreme poverty in all the regions of the world.The main culprits are war and economic and military but also the social future of nations. In the military but drain which could be used for better, constructive and peaceful purposes for the millions of children who are down-trodden and poor.
The first cry of a new born baby in paris or Rome or Beijing, or New Delhi or Harare, has the same pitch and tone, each saying “Here I am, I have come through, I am the citizen of the world.” The babies, suckling, growing into youths restless and questioning, then as grown ups they seek a hope. There are child faces of blossom smiles or mouths of hunger. Faces having land and sea in them, faces lost and wandering where to go this afternoon or tomorrow morning. Some faces are profiles in an instant of agony. Some faces have an expression of a hate ready-to-kill or clam and ready-for-death faces.There is suffering which we are to mitigate.There is SOS help which we are to render.
There are orphan children whom we are to educate. There are tears which we are to wipe. There are wounds which we are nurse . There are naked children who we are to clothe. There are problems of poverty, unemployment and alienation which we are to tackle . All is not rosy on this rosy day . As John Keats wrote –
‘The weariness, the fever and the fret there, were men sit and hear each other groan, where palsy shakes a few sad last grey hair, where youth grows pale, spectre-thin and dies’.
This is our earth, not everywhere joyous, not everywhere contented. There is a distinct message for us. “Help the poor” . There is responsibility on us to ameliorate the plight of the poor children.
