Sometime back I had a day off so after running all my household errands I had some time at my hands in the afternoon. I did not want to spend any more time on my P.C or laze in front of T.V feeling like an idiot. I decided to visit a book exhibition being held in the city. After all who needs company when you have a book in hand?

The book fair was quite nice with a large number of publishers with a large range of books on display. As planned I bought a couple of books which interested me. There was large crowd. But what pleased me most that there was huge number of school children many of them still wearing their school uniforms. They skimmed the titles excitedly. I had begun to think with T.V and Computers having arrived in a big way kids don’t read much. It felt good to see young people still are fond of books.

After spending quite some time at the exhibition I headed out. On the way out I stopped to watch a group of kids flicking through the pages of a colorful children’s book. Suddenly I came across the sight of a watchman at the entrance trying to stop a street urchin from entering the venue of the fair.

I stopped and listened to the conversation between the urchin and the watchman. The urchin wanted to enter the fair. The poor kid thought it to be any other fair, requested to be let in so that he could polish shoes and earn a few rupees. It looked like it must have been days since he had a complete meal. He was dressed in torn shorts and shirt.

At once I was struck by the travesty of the situation. Just moments earlier I had seen kids inside the fair buying books on clearing competitive exams. With lots of dreams for their future and here was kid who thinking no further than the next meal.