For quite sometime now, I had been asking this question to myself. The trigger seems to have been last Saturday, when we had been shopping out and made some hefty purchases....got myself a Nike shoe for some 2,550 bux...this is the first time, that I am spending so much on a filthy shoe..for that matter on anything other than my college fees. But when I bought it, I didn't feel anything bad about it...."I have the money, let me flaunt it" might have been my thought process then...I don't know...had dinner in some silly restaurant for even higher amount...but then after all these, while returning back to the room, was the event, that made me bow my head in shame, happened...we were there in a signal, waiting for the green...then I saw a urchin with his father...the guy was a hunchback...he was there asking for alms to everyone...there was a car in front of us...an A/c car...with all windows closed and the dark glasses hiding the persons sitting inside...he would have banged on the windows for quite some time and then came to us....I was sitting in the pillion of the bike with the luggages on both hands....I would have easily given the bags to my friend and given the urchin something...but I don't know, when I became such a hard hearted soul, that I turned my face away from the urchin...I had just now spent some 3000 bux on silly stuff, but I wouldn't give some money to an urchin....God...why should I be so??...I have already noticed this in myself so many times...I would just comfort myself that I don't have change to give them..but I dare not ask myself, on why should it be that I should give only coins or change to them....why should I not give the rupee note that would invariably be there in my wallet??..Why had I become so pathetic a creature??...when had I lost the Human empathy towards a fellow human...
The heights of it all came yesterday, when we were out for our dinner. We saw a speeding ambulance and I commented "Ambulance driver's job is the most terrible job to do...coz, you know that there is a life that is struggling inside the vehicle and you need to speed..but you also know that you cannot drive rashly to save the life inside, then you might end up killing others on the road"...for this a friend of mine replied..."Athellam avangallukku marathu poirukkum, with practice, they would not worry about the patient inside- doctors too do that..."
How can you get down to that extent??....whether I am doing this job for 4 days or 40 years- doesn't matter, when it comes to trying to save a life...I wonder not on his answer, but on the thought process that must have gone through to answer in such a way...why is it so???...
Questions...questions and questions...but no answers...