People who pick up the garbage, and clean our houses and streets are not ordinary people. They are called ‘golden hands’ because they maintain the beauty of this world. They get their hands and themselves dirty to make the world beautiful.

But what do we do in return? We behave rudely with them just because they are dirty or poor! We all know very well that God has created us all equal and has given more wealth to some and less to some. So how can we be arrogant due to the wealth given to us by Allah and treat the poor with inferiority, when we also know that God can take back what he has given us?

We have all heard about the earthquake which took place in Balakot on October 8, 2005, due to which people’s houses and properties were destroyed in an instant. This is the reality of our worldly things, they can be taken from us in an instant. So, what’s the point of being arrogant and belittling others?

But people do not understand this simple truth. Wild animals are better than some of us, because they at least remember who has done them a favour and who has been cruel to them. And we, despite being noble creatures, disrespect those we consider inferior to us.

If just for one day a servant takes off, our mother and other family members get worried. So just imagine how ugly our world would be if there were no cleaners — there would be rubbish everywhere, no one would come to pick up our garbage. We should be thankful to these cleaners, but we don’t even talk well to them when they knock on the door to pick up our garbage.

Anyone who is earning an honest living by doing hard work needs to be respected. Even cleaners are doing a job, just like others are doing their job, though others may be doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. Everyone has different duties. The cleaner is fulfilling his responsibility well and at the same time he is respecting us.

Most of us are educated, some highly educated, but what is the use of this education if it doesn’t teach us to respect everyone, especially the poor and illiterate.

There are two things that reflect our personality — one is our patience when we have nothing and the other is our behaviour when we have everything. So let us judge ourselves and see what our personality is like.

It is ironic that if a poor person cries and asks us for help, we think they are acting; on the other hand, while watching a movie or play on TV, we get emotional when we see people crying.

Yesterday, I went to a restaurant and there I saw a family who had brought their maid with them to take care of their children. They ordered a lot of food, but they don’t even bother to offer her a drink and that poor caretaker of their children was looking at the food with sad eyes.

It’s not the story of just one family, but nowadays a lot of people do the same. Some people give their rotten food and torn clothes to their house servants, forgetting that they are also humans and how can they eat or wear something which we don’t?

We don’t wonder how we would feel if we were in the place of the poor and all this was happening to us. We should be thankful to God that He has blessed us with so much, but we are doing the opposite, we are making God angry by treating His creatures badly.

Don’t oppress the poor, for a worst fate can happen to us in return. Let us start to respect the poor!

Published in Dawn, Young World, November 27th, 2021