جشن آزادی مبارک - Happy Independence Day

A school boy, making packets of green and white balloons for independence day celebrations.

In the background you can see the mixture of overflowing sewage and accumulated rainwater. The kid sat there on the road, oblivious to the surroundings, concentrating on getting the staples right.

When i took the shot, all i could see was hopelessness. I asked myself, what exactly are we celebrating? Are we celebrating that in 61 years, we still don't have a working sewerage system! Are we celebrating the fact that 10 year old school boys are sitting on the road in a puddle of mud, trying to make a living by selling balloons!

And I just answered my own question, this is not hopelessness. He is a school boy, and he is making a living. He is personification of hope!

The anti-child-labor activists will lynch me for saying this, but I think there is nothing wrong with earning a living :)

Obviously coming from an impoverished family, the kid never had a bright future, we never gave him an equal chance. But compared to how other children his age are doing in Karachi, he is much better than the lot.
He is not begging at a traffic signal. He is not sitting outside some mazar waiting for the langar. He is not shoplifting or pickpocketing. He is not picking up pieces of scrap metal and paper from garbage dumps and he is certainly not scavenging for food from these heaps of garbage.

He is actually earning a living! And the icing on the cake is, that he also goes to school!

Its time for us as a nation to re-think a lot of things.
Most importantly, our direction! Where are we heading? What will become of this nation? With inflation going berserk, how long will it take before this guy drops out of school? What opportunity are we giving to this guy and others like him?