From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 24. IMITATION IS YOUR CREMATION
comes to work in the office and goes back. It was a holiday so he had come with his wife and child.
A crowd gathered, and they said, ”Whose child is this?” – because in Bombay children are being
stolen.
In all the big cities of India children are being stolen. Then they are crippled, blinded, and they are
made beggars. And there are gangs: a certain man who feeds them and takes all their earnings
in the evening. He feeds them, he gives them clothes, he gives them shelter. But unless they are
blinded, crippled, their legs cut off or their hands cut off, who is going to give them money? The
more crippled and the more miserable they look, the better are their chances for begging, and the
more money they bring in.
So in every big place children are being stolen. And they end up in some gang where there are
hundreds of children. The police know; the police take their own part of the money. The police do
not prevent the children from begging on the streets; rather, they protect them. In fact they help the
owner of these children so that these children cannot escape anywhere.
In fact these children cannot escape because they have been blinded, crippled – where can they
escape to? Who will look after them? They don’t know where their father is, their mother is, from
where they have been brought – because if they were caught in Calcutta, they would be used in
Bombay. If they were caught in Bombay, they would be used in Madras. So they don’t know where
they come from or where they are right now.
They cannot escape, but the police still keep an eye out so that nobody tries to escape. Everybody
has his share, except that child. And if he comes one day without any money, then he gets beaten.
So he has to come with it. He cannot try to hide some money from the owner, because he knows
how much a child earns.
The owner goes on walking around and looking to see how much this child will have earned by the
end of the evening. So tentatively he knows that this boy is bound to come with ten rupees, fifteen
rupees. And if he comes with two rupees then he gets beaten. And where can he hide the money?
That money is found immediately.
So a crowd gathered and they asked, ”You are both sannyasins; this woman is a sannyasin, you
are a sannyasin. In the first place, why are a woman and a man sannyasin together? That is not
allowed. In the second place, this child – from where did you get this child?”
They said, ”This is our child.” They had to say it. And people started getting ready to beat them:
”This is your child? You are a sannyasin and you have a child”
Somehow the sannyasins tried to explain to them, showed my mala, and said, ”We are not old,
traditional sannyasins.”
Somebody in the crowd knew about me. He said, ”Leave them. They are not your sannyasins. They
belong to a different kind: neo-sannyas.”
From the station they came directly to me. They said, ”Give sannyas to our child also, because
without sannyas we will be caught again. We are poor people and anybody can start beating us and
From Ignorance to Innocence 349 Osho