It was a sad picture I saw on the cover of a magazine lying on my table; it showed a little girl crying because she was hungry! Can you imagine how she must have been feeling when the photographer took the picture? How her stomach must have been groaning, reminding her again and again that there was no food in her belly, till it must have become a physical and unbearable pain, the pain of hunger! We have all seen this hunger, sometimes it’s when we look out of our car window and see the helpless eyes of a beggar looking at some sandwich we are holding in our hand.
Sometimes when we look out of a train at some far away station and see skinny children playing on the platform, and suddenly they look up at our train window and you can see the look of emptiness in their eyes, a reflection of the state of their hunger! “What can we do?” You ask. Many years ago, while growing up, I used to make a big fuss about finishing my food. My grandmother used to beg me to finish all the food on my plate, but every breakfast, lunch and dinner I would leave behind food that was ultimately thrown away.
One day my grandmother took the food left on my plate, wrapped it in a paper, and threw it out of the window. I went to the window and looked out to see why my grandmother had done this. I was shocked by what I saw. I saw two thin beggar boys fighting, yes fighting over the leftovers of food from my plate. They were shouting and screaming and fisting each other, so they could feed themselves from that small packet. My grandmother looked at me and there were tears in her eyes, and slowly there were tears in my eyes also.
From that day, I have tried never to waste my food, and when I eat I try to serve onto my plate only the amount of food I can eat. I will never forget those two starving boys fighting over my waste. “What can we do?” you ask. “Don’t waste food!” Don’t waste food that is precious to others. Also, if you have a party, a wedding or even a gettogether of friends, see if you can put all the wasted food, the leftovers into a vessel and take it to where the poor are.
There, give it to the poor people. It may take time, especially if you are tired after a party, but just seeing the joy on the faces of those people, eating what you would have otherwise wasted, will give you more pleasure than you got from your dinner or wedding! When you’re going to waste, think of that hungry girl on that magazine cover..! bobsbanter@gmail.co
