facial-angle

You may be wondering why the illustration for this post is an ultrasound plate. The reason is that there exists no picture of the child whose story we tell.

Little Sonny was born a month or so ago to a beggar woman of the Kalka Temple. This was the mother’s 4th child, the eldest way in her late teens. Two of her children are special needs children and the husband passed away before Sonny was born. When the baby arrived and it was a boy, the mother was elated.

However one look at the child was enough to realise that the baby was born with Down Syndrome. No one had the heart to tell the mother. Would she have believed this? Perhaps not as Sonny was the ray of sunshine she held on to.

A few weeks later Sonny passed away. The reason given was an insect bite at night. He had gone to sleep alive and woke up dead. Maybe it was all for the best as a child like him had a very bleak future.

Had he been from a well-to-do family that a scan like the one above may have resulted in his being aborted.

He could also have been born in a caring family that would have done everything possible to make his life the best or to a family where he would have been shunned. But that was not the case.

Sonny is one of children born in India but never claimed by the land. They remain wandering souls that have fallen off the net and when they pass they often fade from the memories of those who gave them life as they are too busy in simply surviving.