This week's columnist is 21-year-old Laura Walton, from Sutton-in-Craven, who is studying journalism at City University, London.
Last summer during my travels around India poverty of which I have never known was revealed on a road trip around Rajasthan.
I arrived in Jaipur in the early afternoon with an empty stomach. Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan, commonly known as The Pink City, because of the pink tone of its old buildings and city walls. The locals associated the colour pink with hospitality, and in 1853 painted the city pink in preparation for the visit of Britain's Prince Albert.
Today it is a city of architectural splendour, built on the bed of a dry lake and surrounded by protective hills. It's an incredibly colourful city that radiates a warm glow in the evening light.
Jaipur's dusty pink roads where packed with cars, mopeds and rickshaws, entangled with elephants and camels, buses and pedestrians. Street children wandered aimlessly among goats and cows on either side of the road.
These children are in this situation due to various reasons. Often their parents send them out to beg for money to help support the family. Some, however, have been abandoned by their parents and relatives, or have chosen to leave home due to some kind of abuse that has gone on beyond their tolerance level. There are also those who have run away from home when they have been won over by the image of city life, glamourised by magazines and movies, but they all too soon have come to experience the appalling reality of city life.
The children easily noticed me as the tourist I was. I recall being in a car locked in the confusion of the busy street when first spotted from above a hundred yards by hungry children as a possible target. In tattered clothes and shoeless feet, the children rushed to my car, surrounding it in short time. With a heavy heart I responded to their tapping at my windows by locking my doors and ignoring them, as advised by my guide. This happened several more times as we made our way through the city.
That evening I ate in luxury at the Restaurant Oriental, a magnificent three-course meal. There were musicians and dancers putting on a show of the grandest quality as I ate my lavishly-prepared banquet. The images of starving street children faded from my mind as I enjoyed the show, yet the poverty still existed (just across the street actually), but I was more than happy not to be thinking of it for the moment. I was lucky and I knew it.
That night when I returned to the hotel as I forced myself to think about the people on the street, I wondered for a moment where they would lay their heads that night. Then in almost no time at all the guilt-provoking thoughts had passed. It was easy enough for my mind to return to its usual selfishness as I lay on my double bed, listening to my iPod and reading my book in my air-conditioned comfort.
The miserable reality is that these people are just innocent, lonely and frightened children. A street child is the exposed face of poverty, sickness and neglect. And perhaps the worst tragedy is other people's indifference to them.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article