Those who still want to cling to the human grandeur must succumb now for the eyes at last settled to over throw stoniness!
Stepping out in a street of Gujarat leading toward the shrine of ‘Shah dola’, you’re bound to gape (if you’re not already prepared) at an unusually high number of microcephalics, trudging around or sitting amidst hordes of flies, possibly patting at some bowed head (whose owner would be handing over money to them). Wonders yet not have come into sight though. Scan the environ closely & you’d find that none of the rat child or Shah dolah ka choha (for that’s what they are called, inna lillah’e wa inna illah’e rajeon) is alone. Tagged along with them would either be some shrine worker or horribly…a beggar master!
There however isn’t a mere beggar master or beggar Mafia behind ‘rat children case’ in Pakistan...Welcome, to the Legend of Shah Dolah!
The legend has it that the infertile woman who come & pray at the shrine are blessed with a child for sure, but the first child (perhaps because of some technical fault of Shah Dola’s blessings) would be a Choha (microcephalic). The caution that follows is that if the child isn’t handed over to the shrine, all subsequent children the ‘blessed’ mother would conceive will be microcephalics too.
You might say, fiddlesticks…who’d believe on all of it! But the high incident of such children (all over Pakistan) now might want greeting you to the 21st century.
At the shrine, you’d find throngs of superstitious infertile (supposedly) women, praying passionately (to Allah or that saint?). They would warn you of gory consequences if you try wheedling them against the belief, for the sacred child-to-come is also called “God’s child” (ma’az Allah).
Question however is, if this is just a myth, what will answer the abundance of these children in Pakistan?
Money…is the answer!
The shrine management & the beggar mafia (you might find with so ease around the said Shrine & now all over Pakistan) give that answer.
The first child born after a prayer on the shrine is taken by the management (however normal it might be, for they know how to make a human, a choha!)
The kid from infancy is kept in an iron suit, with iron rings & clamps on heads & iron gloves & shoes specifically. The motive is to let baby grow in a controlled condition…his head (brain too) hands & feet barred of growth completely. What ensues is an etiolated, gangling kid with very small skull; hands & feet…rodent like teeth…protruding ear, nose & lips (for these grow normally, hence look over-large) & retarded mental faculties!
There also are evidences of these wicked infant keepers’ tampering with the victim’s pituitary gland to destroy any hormonal release (essential for growth) in the future!
& this way, you successfully produce a human asking for your empathy & in many cases your respect for the legend of Shah dolah…you also have successfully produced a specimen of human grandeur, perhaps!
Shrine management however will never agree to this, what they have for an answer is a ‘genetic deformity’ blessed upon the sacred child.
Experts have a different opinion, though. Microcephaly can genetically run in a family only if you already have someone suffering from it. But in the case of these children, there is only one ailment….that is, Jahalat!
In 9 out of ten cases, the child is never suffering from any disease at all. The mother, before gestation period however, might be suffering from some reproductive disease & the shrine management cashes it out!
But what when you find so many of these children swarming in every town & city (not just Gujrat) ushered by their masters? A horrible reality takes wings! Beggar mafia, it says, has spread the legend all over Pakistan. In many cases when you meet such handicapped beggars, they might never have seen the shrine of Shah dolah at all.
Beggar mafia dealing with those children is said to be dealing with even more horrendous crimes then just deforming the kid.
Spies of the mafia sniff about for microcephalics all across the country & in case they can’t coax the parents into bargaining (where the prices they offer, range from 40-80,000 rupees) kidnapping is the next resort & you add an other helpless, miserable human being who asks, through never asking that what was his fault…was it that he was born to the cream of creation?
The number of these help less beings is increasing. We, are the special specie that knows how to turn deformity into gold…how to exploit disorders & how, to play with life if it’s not ours!
Let's suppose there are no ears left to hear the silent cries of these human, wanting to be human!
(From the Diaries: some of the Bugs! =)
Wednesday, 23 September 2009)
