Idgah : by, Munshi Premchand

No matter how rich you are,

No matter what you can offer from your money to the people around you,

What matters is how you treat them!

Idgah is a very powerful story written by Munshi Premchand, a well known Hindi Wiriter. This story is a must read piece of literature by the readers of all ages. It has been picked from the book "Maansarovar", a popular collection of stories by the author.

Storyline :-

The story opens with a bright morning. The long fasting of thirty days is over and the day is of festival Eid. People all around are chirpy and getting ready to go to Idgah, which is at a distance of three miles from the village. Rich children will get good amount of money (in the form of Idi) to spend while poor ones will have to control their buying temptations. Despite these economical differences, children are happy and positive beyond a limit.

Hamid is a five-year-old orphan boy. He is poor and lives with the only guardian of his life – his grandmother Amina. Hamid is oblivion of the fact that his parents are dead; instead Amina has assured him that his father is gone to faraway land to bring lots of gifts for him while his mother will bring a lot of merits from the home of Allah. Hamid believes in their homecoming, hence he is always optimistic and full of life.

Amina does some petty needle work to keep their lives get going, but in a sense too poor to afford a sumptuous meal on a special day like Eid. Initially Amina hesitates to send Hamid out to Idgah without a chaperone as she fears he may get lost in the crowd but when he insists she lets him go. Soon he catches up with his friends: Mahmud, Mohsin, Noor and Sammi. All his friends hail from well to do families; they have over ten paisa as compared to his three paisa Idi. Hamid being poor is