By Sudha Khristmukti
In my tenth-grade class at the private school was a boy, Mustaq, who wore the filthiest uniform I’d ever seen. He had unkempt hair, smelly feet, and a torn and perpetually dirty schoolbag that held equally dirty notebooks and textbooks.
Naturally, there were frequent snickering remarks made about him.
“Does he ever have a bath?”
“What do you suppose the original color of his school bag was?”
“Ugh! I wish he were in some other class!”
“Why does the school allow him to be here?”
Some of the other students sneered behind his back. Although I suspect he knew about it, if it hurt him he didn’t show it.
Mustaq sat alone on the first bench on the left side of the classroom. Between classes when the rest of us would be busy chatting and laughing with one another, he mostly sat silent and looked out of the window to the fields outside. No one talked with him. No one made the effort to get to know him. He looked a rather forlorn figure, alone on his bench.
During math, history, geography, and language, he needed extra assistance from our teachers. We wondered if he would ever make it through high school.
I often smiled at him – but from afar, keeping my distance.
He seemed saddest in English class. He was especially terrified when he had to read aloud, because every time he mispronounced a word or stuttered, the class broke into muffled giggles, which continued until our teacher sternly shushed us and threatened detention.
One afternoon during recess, I saw him rooted to his bench, preparing for an upcoming test. I somehow developed the courage to approach him and ask if he would like me to help him understand a poem he seemed to be struggling over. He nodded, and as line by line I revealed the meaning, my eyes were drawn to a torn page held together with some awfully thick, gooey stuff.
“What is this?!” I couldn’t help exclaiming in horror.
He hung his head in shame and in a barely audible voice confessed: “It is c-cooked rice. I can’t afford to buy g-glue. M-my mother and I are v-very poor,” he went on, stammering, “and t-these are old, d-discarded textbooks a r-retired teacher gave me.”
I was stunned as he told me about himself and the truth finally dawned on me – that he had only one uniform and he washed it by hand; that his uneducated mother earned so little they could barely buy food, but that she always told him she was determined to put him through school so he wouldn’t suffer the indignities she had. The dirty clothes, the tolerance and patience of the teachers, the ready-to-fall-apart books all suddenly made sense.
I told my friends about his plight. That night, I realized what I had to do.
Two mornings later, when Mustaq walked to his desk, he found a new glue-stick, a pencil-box, a pair of socks, several new notebooks, and even a neatly folded, ironed uniform. Utterly amazed, he gave me the look of someone betrayed and fled the class. We found him under a staircase, sobbing.
“Thank you,” he choked.
When we returned, two other classmates were sitting at his usually vacant long bench. He smiled through his tears.
After that, classmates would surprise him on occasion with needed supplies, including a new red schoolbag. We played volleyball and cricket with him on the school grounds, and he clean-bowled every single batsman and batswoman!
Mustaq had changed for the better: he smiled frequently, lost his stammer, and no longer stared out of the window. But we had changed even more.
We had come to realize how blessed we were and how we took those blessings for granted. We had learned the need to show compassion instead of judgment. We had come face-to-face with our pride, the prejudice we harbored against him, and our unforgiving treatment of him.
And yet, our biggest learning came from Mustaq, in how readily he had forgiven us in spite of the exclusion we had put him through. He must have longed for a kind word but had been met with our selfish indifference; to belong, but we had excluded him from the joy of simple friendship.
By modeling forgiveness, Mustaq taught us to look beyond ourselves – to reach out to others and to share from what we had. We had discovered that he was materially poor but that we were poorer – in spirit.
Sudha Khristmukti is a freelance writer, and independent teacher of English, who enjoys playing the sitar and flute but loves western music, especially piano and saxophone. Sudha is a member of The Methodist Church in India, and lives in Nadiad, Gujarat, India.