Nobody should be lost

I’m a rare traveller, but for the last couple of months I’ve taken up transversing frequently between the stations of Kolkata and Siliguri. I’ve always learnt that a coin has two sides, and history has it whenever someone tried to judge the value of a coin without reading both the sides, the value would turn out to be irrelevant. Lately this month, I came across a movie: LION. I learnt about a five-year-old boy who lost his family and took up to living on one of the railway station of Calcutta (now Kolkata) until he was sent to a home of lost children and later adopted by an Australian family from there. Now that I’ve seen the movie, I have a fair knowledge of what those little children and teenagers sleeping on the footpath or on the subways are up to. Previously I just thought that they were all beggars or duping people. But now it seems not everyone is the same. 

A little research on my part reads: 

About 60,000 children go missing every year in a populous nation and more than 22000 are not found, and child activists say many ends up in the sex trade.

India has the largest number of child labourers under the age of 14 in the world. Even though the law prohibits children under the age of 14 from working, as many as 12.66 million children work as labourers.

Source: Aljazeera.com

The studies say that a child who is habituated to the street life for more than a month or so is difficult to rehabilitate. That is children if not traced within months of being lost is more likely to waste their lives into the streets. 

I’m writing this blog to let people know the information and make them aware that they sometimes they can save a life by just approaching for a little help, not everyone has much of a free time and not everyone can donate dollars and gold to the poor but next time when you spot a children, who seems to be hungry or lost on the streets, ask them their whereabouts. If they need any help, all you have to do is dial 1098( India) or Google your country’s emergency number and just notify them. 

There are helplines and NGO’s all over the world, all they require is common people’s assistance. Let’s make this world a beautiful place to live and nobody should be lost. Our little help can change a child’s life.