I remember the times as a toddler when I used to play with my doll and have tea parties with my friend. The doll was mine and the tea set was hers. We used to make lovely pink juice by smushing bougainvilla flowers and green juice with leaves from the garden and serving it out in the small cups and saucers. We would then fake as though we were drinking it and make more. So many giggles, dirty fingers and fun. And then my friend's family decided to move to a new neighbourhood. I watched her leave. The tea set went with her and I did not make bougainvilla juice for a long time. It was never mine but I felt the loss.
I remember watching the boy in the house across ours from my window. They had just moved in recently. I was in my teens and he must have just joined college. I had this huge crush over him and would make appearances outside just in time to catch his eye. He would barely acknowlege me but that did not deter me. One day, I was returning home from school in my bi-cycle, when I saw him on his motorbike. He had a girl in his pillion seat, clinging to him affectionately. He was never mine but I felt the loss.
The above accounts are true and I can perhaps smile at how I grew through my losses of things not mine!
Today, I watch news about children being abused. Be it a boy who is waiting to be executed in Iran because he killed a man trying to molest him, be it a toddler who has been maimed so that he can be a beggar, be it a girl who dies in childbirth because her body is just 13 years old, be it a child who is abandoned by parents who cannot afford to feed her... These children are not mine, but I feel the loss.
