Run for Charity

Round Table Charity
Charity is laudable –it serves the soul. It makes you feel like a better person and superior to uncharitable peers. So when the Chennai round table organized a run for charity I joined with great gusto. “A Citizen’s run” they said for the school children. (I did not understand what exactly they planned for the school children. The ones that had been brought there for display were barefoot).
I did not realize that is was just a showcase event, deigned for Chennai’s high society to meet and speak to each other in their designer sports wear pulled tightly over concealed corsets , enormous sun glasses and expensive make up.
The school children, who were to receive the charity were assembled in the hot Chennai sun and forced to sit in the mud. They were given free T shirts with the logo of the organization that had contributed money—Nokia, Miot Hospitals and Ford cars.
Some drummers arrived and started to beat their drums so that the procession could start along Marina Beach. Since the T shirt clearly said “run” that is what my daughter and I did. We ran the entire 6 km (my daughter says it is only 5). The barefoot children cut through the barricades and headed for the end point. I don’t blame them. They were barefoot, the sun was hot and we had to stand in queue for the drinking water.
Hot, sweaty and dehydrated, as we reached the turning point we discovered that the organizers had abandoned their posts. We did not quite know where to turn.. There were no flags or indicators.
A few foreigners were brought as show pieces. They hung around and some of them were driven the entire route in a car.
The last straw was at the finish. The organizers, yellow arm bands and other badges of office were clustered around the Quality Walls ice cream van having a good whack.
Charity is good. Runs for charity are good. But why are we making the underfed barefoot recipients earn their money? Why are we overfed physically unfit citizens not doing the “Citizen’s Run” for them?