I stood there, clad in a new white dress, my hand clutching a crisp 5000-rupee note. There was a sense of pride within me, a feeling of superiority as I beamed with self-congratulation. I had sacrificed my desires—no perfumes, no snacks from the college canteen, all for this moment of supposed generosity. I had set aside the trivial for something greater. Today, I was going to make a difference, or so I thought.
With my pocket money swelled by a little extra, I left my place for the sole purpose of charity. The destination? A “Special Kids’ School.” I entered, my heart heavy with the sanctimonious weight of my good deed. “Poor souls,” I thought, as I surveyed the children who seemed to play and shout, their bodies incomplete. I watched them through a veil of pity, my gaze full of condescension. They were the ones in need. Or so I believed.
I asked for the head boy of the school, a child who, at 14 or 15, stood out among his peers. The sound of his crutches echoed in the hall. Deprived of normal feet, he hobbled toward me. His gaze met mine, and there was something in it—a defiance, a pride, a challenge. My heart fluttered in my chest, and I thought, “How strange, how odd.” He was just a creature to be pitied. And yet, his eyes told a different story.
Without hesitation, I extended my hand, offering the 5000-rupee note, convinced that my charity would be accepted. But instead, his reply left me stunned.
“Charity from folk like you, we don’t need,” he said.
The words struck me, but I was too proud to understand. “Why?” I asked, my voice dripping with the arrogance of someone who believed they were doing good.
The boy, still standing tall despite his physical limitations, met my question with a calm but piercing response. “You think of yourself as a gift from heaven, a beauty in your late teens. But take my word, it’s not us, rather ‘you’ who are incomplete.”
The words reverberated in my mind. He continued, “We don’t walk on the path to damnation because we have no feet. Tell me, how many times have you, with your eyes, seen the starvation, injustice, and poverty around you?”
My chest tightened with each word. The boy, whose body lacked what mine possessed, had looked deeper, further than I ever had. He didn’t need my money. He needed society to wake up. He needed people to look beyond their superficial charity and address the rot that plagued us all.
“Lovely fingers like yours we don’t have,” he continued, “but you, with your complete body, have failed to see the real tragedy—the incomplete souls of those who walk this earth thinking they are whole.”
In that moment, something within me cracked. The pride, the vanity, the sense of superiority—it all fell away. I had come to give charity, but it was I who needed a lesson. The boy had seen through my façade and called out the emptiness that lived within me. He had shown me that it wasn’t our bodies that made us whole, but our hearts, our actions, and our ability to see beyond ourselves.
And there, in the presence of children whose bodies were “incomplete,” I realized the true meaning of completeness—it was the soul that mattered most.