This viral video is coming from Guwahati, where a 13-year-old girl was rescued from forced child labor and physical abuse. Sensing the impending raid, the accused woman reportedly hid the girl inside a divan storage box for nearly 25 minutes before officials arrived. 

Is this happening for the first time? Haven't we seen something similar like this happening around us before?

A housemaid brings her young daughter with her to get "helped" in the work. One day, the housemaid turns sick and sends her child alone because she already knows the work. How is this different from child labor?

In the kitchens of the restaurants, or in the open air as waiters, we see *Chotu*(child worker) around us, who is treated disrespectfully, being shouted at, and sometimes, even harassed physically. And what he does? Just absorbs, gets conditioned by all this, thinks all this as his fate, feels helpless, and carries this baggage with him his whole life that gets forwarded to his young *chotu*. Oppression gets translated to violence given the favourable conditions. The cycle repeats. 

Coming back to the news, what are the odds that the owners became so blind that they forgot the child in front of them, who is getting beaten up so bad that the investigation team found bruises on her body, is also a consciousness who deserves to flourish, to study, to learn, to play, to enjoy, to live. 

My question is to the exploiters: If you would have respected liberation, would you still be able to lock her inside a bed, even for a minute let alone 30 minutes? Can you give the same treatment to your own children? Why is there such a big difference between what is labelled as "mine' and "others"? What makes us so blind when it comes to others? The intention might not be necessarily ill, but the violence is real. 

These questions are worth sitting with.

Where are we heading towards??