27/12/2025
This took place on Christmas Day 2025...in a slum in the Indian/.Nepali border town of Gorukpur, where Reena was in temporary residence, due to the need for her son Rama to receive medical treatment for TB (tuberculosis). She usually spent her days, seeking alms to cover the high costs of her son’s medical treatment!!
REENA’s GIFT
The December sun rose over the narrow lanes of the slum, casting long shadows between the tarpaulin walled & roofed shacks. Reena wrapped her worn dupatta around her shoulders and stepped out into the morning, her feet finding their familiar path through the maze of makeshift homes.
She was not a Christian. She had her own prayers, her own ways of seeking the divine. But she had watched the children of the ghetto - Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and those who claimed no faith at all - grow excited as Christmas approached. They had so little to be excited about in their lives.
For three weeks, mama Reena (she was only 30 yrs of age) had begged on the filthy streets, with a special purpose burning in her heart. Each coin dropped into her outstretched palm, was not for rice or dahl, not for herself at all. She tucked each rupee away carefully, counting and recounting by candlelight, in her small corner of the world.
"Mama, what are you saving for?" fifteen year old Rama had asked one evening, watching her fingers move over the growing pile of coins.
"You'll see," she had smiled. "On Christmas morning, you'll see."
Christmas Eve arrived, and Reena counted her collection one final time. It was enough. Just barely enough.
Before dawn on Christmas morning, while the ghetto still slept, Reena made her way to the store. She bought fresh milk -real milk, not the watered-down kind- and golden jalebis that glistened with syrup, soft gulab jamuns that melted on the tongue, and yummy brown chocolate. Not forgetting the bright red conical hats, that children everywhere associate with Christmas!!
Christmas morn had arrived! As the sun climbed higher, Reena called to the children. They came running, all twenty+ of them, tumbling out of doorways with sparkling eyes that quickly grew wide.
"Merry Christmas," Reena said softly, pouring milk into small paper cups, placing sweetmeats on paper plates, into eager hands.
"But Mamu," young Ranma whispered, "We're not Christian!!"
Reena stretched-out her hand, touching her son's cheek. "No, Rama! You must learn that Goodness belongs to everyone. Love belongs to everyone. And today, we celebrate that a child was born who taught the world about Truth of these qualities! That story is for all of us!"
The children ate slowly, savouring every drop of milk, every morsel of sweetness. Some had never tasted such treats before. They laughed, shared conical red hats, and for a little while, the poverty that surrounded them, seemed to fade away.
Watching them, Reena felt a warmth in her heart, that no amount of money could buy. She had given away everything she'd saved, and yet, she had never felt richer.
That evening, as the children played in the lane and showed off their milk mustaches, old Papa Eric, her long-time benefactor from Australia, called Reena on her old mobile.
"You did not have to do this," he said, teary eyed with emotion.
"I know," Reena replied. "But the best gifts, are the ones we don't have to give. Those are the ones that come from somewhere special"
In a slum, where hunger was common and joy was rare, Reena had created a small miracle - not with magic or wealth, but with the simple decision that someone else's happiness mattered more than her own comfort. She had begged on filthy streets, not for herself, but for the light in a child's eyes.
And in that choice, she embodied everything that the Christmas spirit truly means: that we are called to see the divine in every face, to share what little we have, and to recognize that Love knows no boundaries of faith or circumstance.
Reena's Christmas gift was not just milk and sweets. It was a reminder that Goodness lives in the most unexpected places, and that the truest celebration of any holy day, is found in service to those who need us most.
In this instance, from a Hindu woman, in a Indian slum ghetto, with poor, disadvantaged children of varied Beliefs.
A rhetorical question could be: ‘Have you Truly, been a dispenser of Love and Goodness this Christmas? For the gifts of Truth, Love and Goodness, are the greatest gifts we can share with one another.’
Thank you Reena for sharing your true, unselfish story with your long-term sponsor, Papa!
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