Autobiographies - A New Beginning

Of late, I have been reading many autobiographies; Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin to name a few. But having recently finished the autobiography of Dave Pelzer - A child called ‘it’ made me think about something which we as a human usually chose to ignore; Child Abuse. Though it is written beautifully, it was depressing to know about the author's life struggle as a child and that he was treated brutally by his own mother.
For no reason, he was starved for days, was forced to eat dog’s food and do all household chores without a grain of food for days. He was badly beaten and was burned on stove. Since it was very disturbing, at times while reading, I doubted if it was really true. The cruel behavior of the mother at times appeared unreal. Had it been a fiction I would have left it in between, but a memoir makes a difference. The writer was an innocent child who was unaware of child abuse. He thought it was his fate. And that god has punished him for some reason unknown to him. He suffered the cruelty for several years. The most depressing of all was that even though his neighbors knew that he was treated cruelly, they were behaving deaf and dumb. They behaved as if nothing was happening in the neighborhood. But after years, the way he has come out of that fear and the “mad house” is incredible.

He fought for his freedom and later got admitted into United States Air Force. The fear of his mom had penetrated to this extent that it haunted him for months. I used to read such articles in magazines, but reading an autobiography was altogether a different experience. There are so many children in this world who are ill treated every day. They are treated like slaves, or rather worse than slaves. They are starved for food and water while their siblings in the same house are treated with cakes and sweets. They wear same pair of clothes for weeks, while their siblings are given new pair of clothes every week. Living under the same ceiling they are locked in a small room and forbidden to use toilet for days. They die in there because of bad hygiene and lack of food and later their body is thrown out on road for dogs to feed on.

Are we so occupied in ourselves and avaricious for high paying jobs that even after hearing the cries of innocent children we choose to ignore them? Have we become so inhumane?

It’s a high time that we have kept our eyes and ears closed. Sitting idle we too are the criminals, equally contributing in this crime. Now is the time to act and save souls, because not every child who is abused survives to write an autobiography.