Swarms of people crowded me. The air was thick with the stench of human. I sat in the middle of the crowded marketplace, a barely empty tin held tightly in my right hand while my left arm lay limp and useless by my side.
“Please,” I begged, rattling the few measly coins in my tin at the throng of people walking past me, pushing each other impatiently. My stomach growled, but the noise went unheard in the din of the night. Only I could feel the pangs that engulfed my stomach. Flies hovered around me, settling on me every now and then. I felt too weak to swat them away. It was already taking all my energy to sit up and hold onto my tin, much less shake it. Looking around, I saw a little girl, who couldn’t be more than seven, staring at me with wide eyes from behind her mother’s legs. I held my tin in her direction as I pleaded with my eyes, Please. Have pity on me.
She immediately hid her face in her mother’s pants. How did I end up like this?
“Please,” I croaked out once more to the crowd, but they barely glanced at me. I could see some of them purposely looking away from me. They would turn their heads from my direction, and walk faster. Others would look at me with scorn in their eyes, disgust obviously written on their faces.
It’s not like I wanted to be like this.
Only few would actually stop and drop their change into my tin, and even less would stop and give me food. Even a small bun or a few pieces of kuih would have sufficed, but here I am, starving and penniless among a crowd of people with the act of human kindness and sympathy withering away into the distant past.