Who is to Be Blamed

Who Is To Be Blamed?

At first glance, Sonia ( resident Dhina Jalandhar) looks like a normal young woman, dressed fashionably in a pair of black jeans and a hot pink top. . Well, look again, she is unwell, she is not fashionably slim in accordance with today’s standards, but suffers from malnutrition, she has scars on her face, has unhealthy limp lackluster hair. 

Her young life till today is full of horrors untold. Just like someone’s imagination gone riot. It is a journey full of exploitation, blind faith in quacks who dupe gullible villagers to make a quick buck resulting in a young girls tragedy; whereby she loses her eyesight. At the age of 7years, Sonia a young happy to go girl had gone to attend a wedding, where after consuming something she fellill for two days straight, vomiting constantly. The end result, a weak girl robbed of her eyesight. She had been given some poison, a black magic worked on her so that a young girl could get married and find a suitable groom. Is this blind faith? Superstition?

Trouble always comes in three, they say. Her father fell ill with asthma, heart problem. Her mother has a degenerative disease whereby her legs have no skin on them she can’t walk. They used to sew footballs , earning a meager measly Rs6 per stitched football.  The whole family was engaged in this local industry, as is the case in villages nearby to Jalandhar.

She learned to stitch footballs by touch. In the year 2002, before the World Cup kicked off, the young girl became an icon for the world to stop Child Labor. She went to Japan and Korea having been rescued by a social organization called the Volunteers for Social Justice, an NGO in Punjab in partner with Global March (international). The BBC also highlighted her plight by featuring her in a documentary which was viewed allover the world by millions. She, at that time wanted to study further to become a lawyer to fight injustice, to be financially independent. This crusade started, made the football companies responsible to end child labor worldwide.  Her story, plight was highlighted in papers abroad for example The International Herald Tribune (Tokyo, June 1 2001).

More than ten years have passed and she has done her schooling, trained as a telephone operator so that she can earn a living, but the drive to be a graduate drives her. She has enrolled in the local college, and with the support of the Local MLA Pargat Singh and the Rotary chapter her first year’s fees has been paid.

Sonia asks a few questions which are souls searching. Why was she made a scapegoat to earn money, of which she never saw a penny? Why has the society as a whole become so desensitized that we just shrug off a disability as a way to make money? Why do we think that it’s just a way to make a fast buck?

Have we as a nation lost our empathy towards genuine-ness? It pains to see a human being who has all the dreams and aspirations like the rest of us left to live with no color, worried that where she might work, she might be subject to molestation ? Are women not safe? Why has humanity lost its morals?