A toy gifted to an underprivileged child battling cancer is more than a plaything

It is preternaturally tough being a child cooped up in a cancer ward, a typical day filled with syringes, scans and chemo, when it ought to have been filled with play, play and more play, the room generously scattered with carelessly thrown toys. Even in the cancer ward, a toy can open up a cheerful vista beyond those grey walls for that child receiving it. For some children, that simple joy is a luxury, poverty queering the pitch already ravaged by cancer.

Voluntary organisations working with children battling the double whammy of cancer and poverty seek to make room for those vistas of joy, relying on donations of used toys. This intervention is two-fold as the voluntary organisation works in tandem with donors of used toys. Those donors are “us”: the general public that could be holding on to toys outgrown by the children of the house, but not by the adults who harvest nostalgia from those playthings.

No censure here for latching on to those toys that are no more played with.