The girl with bright balloons

She could not have been more than four. Her clothes were crumpled and torn, ill-suited for Delhi's winter. She approached our parked car outside a local eatery, the smell of roasted chicken and spices lingered in the air. She carried bright balloons in both her hands and knocked on our window.

My sister looked at me and said, "I am going to give her some money."  "Why do you need my permission?" I asked, a little confused.  "Because," she said, "you don’t like giving money to beggars, it enables them and their parents or handlers." I nodded and handed her twenty rupees and told her politely, as politely as one could to a four-year-old who is trying to sell you something. I told her to just keep the money.

She spoke up. With a lisp. She spoke as if she had not yet fully learned to talk. As if it hadn’t been that long before she started talking. She spoke like a child. A child who could not have been over four years old. She said, “please take one,” and handed us a bright blue balloon.

She took the money but did not beg for it. This was her defiance. Her protest against the accident of her birth. Against her fate that faulted her for being born poor. That girl, poor and ragged, who could not have been more than four years old, selling balloons on a chilly winter evening in Delhi. And yet she had more self-respect than me or anyone else I know.

It breaks my heart every time I think about her. It breaks my heart to think that she knew the difference between selling and begging before she could learn to talk.