If hope is alive, nothing is lost

“ ग़म की अंधेरी रात में, दिल को ना बेक़रार करसुबह ज़रूर आएगी, सुबह का इन्तज़ार कर…”

During the morning shramdaan at Mukti Ashram, a rescued child labourer softly mumbled these few lines of an old folk song. The people around him froze, and tears of joy rolled down their faces. They had all been waiting for this moment. Nageshwar, who had lost his voice and his friend on a Diwali night many years ago, was now humming a song of hope. His voice was returning. But more than that, a flicker of hope was returning. Nageshwar was coming back to life.

I couldn’t believe my ears when a colleague called to tell me. I rushed to Mukti Ashram. Seeing me, Nageshwar came running and threw his arms around me. He wept, repeating “Bhaisahab, Bhaisahab” again and again. It felt like a divine embrace. Like the Almighty Himself was holding me tight.

There was a huge celebration that day. We shared sweets. There was music. Everyone danced and rejoiced. It felt as though someone long believed dead had come back to life. That day, it felt like Diwali. A Diwali where Nageshwar didn’t have to endure cruelty, didn’t have to watch his friend die.

All Nageshwar wanted now was to dance, to play, to eat, to sing, to laugh. To reclaim, in one day, all the joy lost to the years stolen from his life. That one day. That one Diwali night.

The dark night.

Nageshwar was an innocent seven-year-old boy when a trafficker came to his village near Darbhanga, Bihar. The man lured him with false dreams of a better life and took him away. Reality hit Nageshwar like a ton of bricks when he found himself sold to a carpet factory near Benaras for a price less than that of frail cattle.

What happened there is nothing less than a chapter in the dark history of humanity. Etched onto its face with burning embers.

Then came the night of October 23, 1995. Diwali. The world shimmered like a million stars under the glow of countless lamps. Doors were flung open to welcome Goddess Lakshmi, the bringer of wealth. Joy and celebration filled the air. The skies thundered with fireworks. But for trafficked and enslaved children like Nageshwar, there is no Holi, no Diwali.

That Diwali night, Nageshwar and his friend Ganesh tried to escape. They planned their getaway through the river where they were often taken for baths. Finding an opportune moment, they ran. But how far and how fast could those tiny feet carry them? Away from beasts like the factory owner, Balla Patel, and his brother? The men caught Ganesh. Nageshwar hid in the shadows of that dark night.

Balla Patel and his brother kept beating Ganesh mercilessly until he began vomiting blood. The innocent life drained from his body as Nageshwar watched, frozen, helpless.

In a place where even the rotting carcasses of animals are buried with respect, Ganesh’s lifeless body was tossed into the river. Such is the fate of these faceless, voiceless children. No dignity even in death.

They found Nageshwar. And along with his small, battered hands and feet, they tied up his hopes and dreams as well. The very rope meant to bind things in strength was used to hurl Nageshwar into the darkest depths of human cruelty.

He cried. Trembled with fear. He bargained with himself, clinging to impossible hope, that maybe if he apologised, they would let him go.

Later that night, the men returned to the dim, locked room where Nageshwar was still tied up. When he saw the bag of firecrackers in their hands, he thought, in all his innocence, that they had come to bribe him into silence so he wouldn’t speak about Ganesh. Little did he know they had come bearing a fresh hell.

The firecrackers were meant for him. And how.

They stripped him naked. Rubbed the extracted gunpowder from the crackers onto his bare skin. And set him on fire.

He screamed for his life, but his cries were swallowed by the sounds of fireworks outside, the sound of children like him laughing, playing, celebrating Diwali. No one came. In those moments of monstrous cruelty, the men felt a sick thrill. A twisted sense of power.

Nageshwar passed out.

A passerby alerted one of our local colleagues that faint cries, like the whimpers of a child in pain, were coming from one of the factories. When they arrived, they found a boy with severe third-degree burns. Most of his skin, and parts of his flesh, had burned to ash. And with it, so had humanity.

Our team rushed him for treatment. The doctors in Benaras tried, but within days they gave up. His flesh had begun to rot. His wounds oozed constantly. He had lost his voice, but not his will to live.

The local authorities called it an “accident.”

The factory owners claimed the child had burned himself while playing with firecrackers.

The villagers suddenly forgot how to speak.

But the truth?

The truth was carved into Nageshwar’s scorched flesh. But no one wanted to see it. Let alone read it. Let alone understand.

After the doctors in Banaras gave up, we brought him to Delhi for further care. My colleagues drove him down in a makeshift ambulance. When I picked him up to transfer him from the car to the hospital stretcher, a piece of flesh, stuck to the cotton bandages covering his wounds, tore off and fell onto my clothes.

And in that moment, it felt like every scripture that preaches humanity, every law that promises justice, every system built to protect us had fallen apart, piece by piece, like Nageshwar’s skin stuck to that cotton bandages.

It felt as though someone had shoved the pain of every burned childhood into my chest. As though my soul itself was being scraped raw. The fluid oozing from his wounds felt like God’s own tears of defeat.

But the will to live is powerful. Nageshwar’s body, slowly, began to heal. But the trauma of that dark night had taken his voice.

Months later, when he finally spoke, it was like a phoenix rising from the ashes of his burnt soul, lighting the path to dreams. To discover. To do. To endless possibilities.

It takes courage the size of the Himalayas to truly internalise Nageshwar’s ordeal.

This wasn’t the first time something like this happened. And it certainly won’t be the last. Even today, there are scores of Nageshwars all around us, hidden in dark corners. Scared. Burnt. For whom festivals like Diwali bring not joy and celebration, but suffering.

This is not just the story of a boy. This is the burnt body of a boy. A body that cannot speak. Yet each scar screams the same question, again and again. Is this the reality of humanity? A world that parades fake smiles and false security built atop the ashes of innocent childhoods?

Nageshwar’s is the story of hope and possibility. Since then, things have changed drastically. However, the violence still continues to exist in the cruellest forms in the world.

Decades later, at that same Mukti Ashram, the first-ever cohort of youth from 11 different countries gathered for the Satyarthi Summer School. They didn’t travel thousands of miles from the comfort of their homes to the humble simplicity of the Ashram to merely understand compassion. They came to feel it. To live it.

In my opening lecture, I shared Nageshwar’s story. To inspire them. To ignite them. To make them feel that no matter how long and dark the night is, the day always breaks. And we must never stop working toward the dawn.

Like Nageshwar, their day begins with shramdaan. They tend to the plants they have planted. When tired, they rest in the shade of trees. The same trees once planted and nurtured by a child like Nageshwar. They may not have been told who planted them, but surely they can feel it. Someone like Nageshwar lives in every leaf and root.

Each day, they’re learning that tears are not just signs of sorrow. They are seeds of change. Catalysts of transformation.

When this session of the Satyarthi Summer School ends, they’ll return to their countries, cities, and campuses. But I know, they’ll carry a spark from Nageshwar’s story within them. They will carry the phoenix that rose from the ashes of Nageshwar’s flesh, now burning as a fire of resistance deep inside.

They will not be among those who look away. They will be the ones who look directly into your eyes and ask the hard questions. They will choose action, not apathy. Solutions, not surrender. And that will mark the most powerful beginning of Compassionate Action.

I can feel it. In these young leaders, compassion is no longer just a feeling. It has become their purpose. Their direction. Their way of reshaping history.

I believe the future of humanity, peace, and justice will be written with the ink of compassion and the pen of youth. And I know this will happen.

I pray for a compassionate world.