Who Is Your Neighbour?
“.A 45 year old man who suffered an injury on his left leg bled to death at the gates of the Chennai Government Hospital The shabbily dressed man, with a plaster on his leg, had been lying under the scorching sun for 20 days…” TOI, 23rd Oct.
Twenty days!
Not an hour or two, not a day nor two, but twenty days in the scorching heat of Madras, lying not at the gates of a five star hotel or rich man’s bungalow but outside a hospital, meant for such as him.
And from the filthy pavement the suffering man cries, “Doctor! Doctor!”
Doctors rush by, their minds on patients they are going to save, their ears closed to the cries below.
Again his pitiful cries and relatives of one who has just recovered, pass him by, happily bearing a box of sweets for the nurses who have saved their kin.
The poor man cries out, not for an hour, not two, but twenty days.
The beggars feed him.
From their scraps and tit bits they give him some.
And in their homes and offices the people of that city are angry. Angry for their neighbouring brethren in Sri Lanka, Tamils just like them who they feel are getting a raw deal in a country across the sea.
“They are our neighbours!”
“Tamils just like us!”
“Being ill-treated by the Singhalese!”
“No human rights!”
“No rights!” they shout about their brothers a thousand miles away.
The poor man cries out, not for an hour, not two but for twenty days, as the beggars feed him outside the hospital gates with scraps and tit bits they scrape out of their nearly empty plates.
“Hello sir, yes, yes, you who walk with fuming face, you who are so angry about human rights across the sea, come with me!”
“Where?”
“Just across the road, to the general hospital!”
“Why!”
“A man lies there, dying!”
“What do you want me to do?”
“The same you are trying to do for those across the sea! Come!”
“No!”
“Why?”
“Because it’s easier shouting about someone a thousand miles away, screaming about human rights and poverty across the sea than lifting and feeding someone across the street..!”
And the man bled to death.
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