The brilliant golden sun rises in the east and falls to the west, and the young street rat Raju wished he could follow its route from his makeshift shelter by the water of the Taj Mahal to the gold-paved roads of America. The west with its equalities and regulations–the west with its education and opportunities. He heard about the west from the American tourists, some white but mostly brown, who wore tantalizingly tiny outfits and spoke with the slightest air of arrogance. With his little sister in his hand he clanged together his bowl of money to collect spare change and disgusted glances–some pitiful, others mirthless. He heard about America from these people, who spoke with lavish praise about the marble monument and then related it to the skyscrapers and flashing lights of New York.
“We don’t have any sort of Taj Mahal,” they’d say with awe, and then their voices would revert back to pride, “But they don’t have New York city here, do they?”
Then they would drop a penny into my bowl and as they walked away I heard them, “We don’t have those creepy beggars either.”
And that’s somewhat exactly what Raju and his little sister had been for the past two years, ever since his mother passed away giving birth to a stillborn third on the corner of an abandoned alley, just two months after her husband’s illness brought him to the same fate. From morning to evening Raju and his sister collected pity-money, sometimes as much as ten rupees, and used it to buy themselves a few rice cakes or other light goods from the numerous street vendors.
But Raju’s sister had grown ill herself, no doubt due to the fumes and the trash and sleeping on the streets millions of people had walked on with filth clinging to their feet. She was only four years old, but her face carried the maturity of someone thrice her age, skeletal thin with huge brown eyes. She might have been a beautiful child, but the sickness pulled her face down even further and gave her a ghostly countenance. When once she had remained quiet, now she cried often. The sickness gave her hunger, and Raju couldn’t collect enough money to feed the both of them whenever they pleased. When once she had been no more than an extra hand to aid her brother to beg, as the tourists took pity on her starving child appearance, now she was more of a burden than a help.
It was getting to be too much for Raju. He pined for the west, he longed to go to America and learn how to read and become a lawyer or a banker or someone powerful. He wished he could be someone waited upon day and night. He saw the tourists at the Taj Mahal with cameras and expensive sneakers and he knew, somehow, that if only he could get to West, he could be like them too.
So, idealistically, he routinely saved one rupee each day in hopes that one day he would have enough for a plane ticket. But with his ailing sister, his savings were drawn into for food, a sweater for her cold limbs, and whatever inexpensive medicines he could get his hands on.
A burden, his sister had become. He hated to admit it, he prayed forgiveness every time the thought crossed his mind. But his sister prevented him from getting his ticket, his way out. A few times, he thought, that the struggle was not worth it.

Now he stood outside the slums where his sister now stayed with a band of beggar children managed by a few thugs. The five thousand rupees in his hand felt heavy, too heavy, and as he turned around slowly and walked away, he pondered the gravity of what he had done. An act of impulse and ignorance–he had no idea as to his next course of action. He had never thought this far ahead, never believed he would actually acquired the money. But now his hand felt empty without the small palm of his sister, and his heart sank. There was no way out. There was only a way to fall deeper into this abysmal rut of poverty and ingratitude.