Different Take

(I was on a visit to CMC, Vellore, for about 10 days; hence the irregular blog)

Thousands of patients from across the country, especially the eastern and north-eastern parts, come to a south Indian town everyday just to consult a doctor. It may sound weird, as it tends to prove that proper healthcare has not reached to the nook and corner of India, being a third-world country. True it is. But how does CMC, Vellore, differ from the rest of the medical institutions in India? Just because it provides best of the medicare or is there something different at the core of it?

I tried to figure out an answer to the question, as hospitals like Apollo, Asia Heart Foundation, government-run AIIMS, Tata Hospital among others are also doing great jobs as far as quality treatment is concerned. CMC, established and being run by Christian missionaries, has more of a heart of service to people than the commercial venture of a multi-speciality medical hub. Besides the latest technical nitty-gritty of medical science, the college also teaches service to mankind. Probably that is the reason a gold-medallist paediatrician like Binayak Sen, one of its alumni, could venture into the remote parts of a backward state like Chhattisgarh in barefoot to set up camps and small medical units to serve the village poor.

Probably that is the reason people from all religions can pray together at the chapel inside the hospital or light a few candles there not for one’s own relatives only, but also for humanity at large. At its heart, CMC believes in service in the true sense of the word. I have hardly seen a person cry even when the condition of his relative admitted there is critical. They pray to Jesus; most of them like the Hindu way, touching His feet. Religions mingle at CMC, the sea of humanity meets at its steps. When i donated blood there on August 21, i felt the same sense of helping another person — who i would probably never know, never meet. I was touched at the way the hospital, one of the biggest and busiest in India, renders service to people 24x7.

Why so much?

How much protection does a common Indian need to survive in this terror-ridden country?
Ask a commuter who takes the suburban train to office regularly. S/he would certainly say that office-goers like him/her have no option but to leave everything to Almighty. The reason is simple: hardly a policeman could be spotted on the trains that too during the morning and evening peak hours.

Ask the same question to one who takes the underground Metro for regular travel. S/he would say the carbine-toting policemen at the entry to the stations at least provide them with some sense of security. To this day, India has not witnessed a terrorist attack on either the Calcutta or Delhi Metro, unlike the Tube in London. Higher level of security at Metro stations instils a safety quotient in us.

Ask the person, who has just come out in the open on the road from Metro, the same question. Again, insecurity creeps in; if there is a bomb hidden in the bicycle parked on the pavement. Yesterday, an incident on the 2338 Santiniketan Express proved that people are more aware than ever before. A guy comes with a blue middle-sized bag to take a seat opposite me in one of the unreserved coaches of the superfast train. No sooner had the train pulled out of Bolpur than a man seated by the window raised an alarm, as the person could not be spotted but only his blue bag. I asked him to ask the person talking over cellphone standing on the door whether it was him who kept the bag on the seat. He confirmed, and all of us, about 15 by then, heaved a sigh of relief.

Basically, it is our responsibility to thwart terror attacks, especially when the intelligence bureau and men in khaki fail to protect us time and again. Our office has also joined the bandwagon of being paranoid of a possible attack — from Mujahideens to Maoists. I don’t know why. Maybe i am too inexperienced to understand the network of things: from terrorists plotting a strike on a newspaper’s office to frisking female employees on the footpath!

Could the private security guards wearing different shades of blue prevent a white Toyota laden with explosives from ramming into the palatial white house, our office, like that in the Indian embassy in Kabul last month? Perhaps not. Had this happened, 9/11 would not ever take place. So is 7/7, 7/ 11... the list is endless, as usual. If a terrorist organisation wants to deal a blow, there is hardly any machinery that can secure our lives. But our awareness can do and for this, we don’t need metal detector, but a good mental space laden not with RDX, but a sense of humanity; feeling for fellow human beings; caring for good earth that we live in.

Remembering Niranjan da - II

Symbols say it all — a screeching brake to a dynamic life, a sense of void leading to days of mourning. The chair in the picture will be occupied by someone else in some other time; the ashtray too will be used by another person to stub a Wills stick into it; the flowers will wither in a few days. But on that Friday morning (August 1), when the ambience was more than morose at the Deomel seminar hall, i took this picture at the room where NM used to take a puff after a double period of about 90 minutes. With a small garden outside the window, the place gave NM his source of poetic energy between classes. In fact, everyone at the condolence meet said that NM had more poetic self than his self as a teacher. Was this the reason that the poet NM could have foreseen death was knocking his doors? Why could the man say that he was feeling no longer at home in Santiniketan, just a few days before his sudden death? Why did he tell Singhji of Hindi department that their joint project would never be finished even when 70 per cent of the work was complete? Is it because he could “see” death? Was he aware that this time he would have to lose a battle to “proud death”? Are poets saints? Can they see future? Can they feel what’s going to happen? Maybe yes.

A human being like NM was rare in this world. From the rickshawpullers to vegetable vendors, from a grade IV staff of the university to the vice-chancellor, i was told later, went to see NM lying at the PM hospital covered with a white piece of sheet. Why was he so popular among all classes of people in Santiniketan? Santiniketan is not a city, but it has every character of a cosmopolitan town also. Those who know Santiniketan for a long time — not just weekend visits — would say that although it has a balm-like effect to every illness, sometimes it also behaves quite rude too. But to NM, this place was never that rude. NM was an outsider — he was not at all an ashramite in “niketani” sense; i have never seen him attending mandir on Wednesdays; never had i seen him in the crowd on Barshamangal evening at Natyaghar. Then why and how could he win hearts of hundreds of ashramites and people in Tagore’s town? Only because he was a great human being with a kind heart that gave space to everyone — from a teenaged student to tea-seller; from a professor driving four-wheeler to Mantu da riding a ramshackle rickshaw. One needs a unique heart to feel these all; a self not only for personal gains, but for humanity at large.

©Supratim Pal

Click on the link below to find tributes to NM by Deomelites. http://www.orkut.co.in/CommMsgs.aspx?cmm=19848648&tid=5228288192276467117&start=1