Chop off your child's hand for food.

I read this email today. Didn't think much of it until i came to the last part. Somehow it made me cry. While we are here debating about sex, love lives, tourism and being S.A.D or not S.A.D... there are people out there who do not even have an inkling of all these.

"After a conversation with one of my friends, he told me despite taking 2 jobs, he brings back barely above 1K per month, he is happy as he is. I wondered how he can be as happy as he is considering he has to skimp his life with the low pay to support a pair of old parents, brother, 2 sisters and the many bills of a household. He explained that it was through one incident that he saw in India that happened a few years ago when he was really feeling low and touring India after a major setback.

He said that right in front of his very eyes he saw an Indian mother chop off her child's right hand with a chopper. The helplessness in the mother's eyes, the scream of pain from the innocent 4-year-old child haunted him until today.

You may ask why did the mother do so; had the child been naughty, had the child's hand been infected?? No, it was done for two simple words -- To beg.

The desperate mother deliberately caused the child to be handicapped so that the child could go out to the streets to beg. Taken aback by the scene, he dropped a piece of bread he was eating half-way. And almost instantly, a flock of 5 or 6 children swamped towards this small piece of bread which was covered with sand, robbing bits from one another.

The natural reaction of hunger.

Stricken by the happenings, he instructed his guide to drive him to the nearest bakery. He arrived at two bakeries and bought every single loaf of bread he found in the bakeries. The owner was dumbfounded but willingly sold everything. He spent less than $100 to obtain about 400 loaves of bread (this is less than $0.25 per loaf) and spent another $100 to get daily necessities. Off he went in the truck full of bread into the streets. As he distributed the bread and necessities to the children (mostlyhandicapped) and a few adults, he received cheers and bows from these unfortunate. For the first time in his life he wondered how people can give up their dignity for a loaf of bread which cost less than $0.25.

"Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want, it is the realization of how much you already have."

"Everyone wants happiness, no one wants pain, but you can't make a rainbow without a little rain."