People, people...

Since I am enlisted with the local Voluntary Blood Donors’ Association, people often call me up in medical emergencies. It so happened that a woman phoned me on Monday night (Jan. 7^th), sobbing that her 84-year old father was struggling for his life in hospital, and needed blood urgently, and since his group matched mine, would I please come post haste? I drove over on Tuesday morning, only to find that this woman was someone who lived on my own street, and her daughter had attended my tuition nearly a decade ago. Blood donation over, she and her mother were all over me, of course, telling me what a good man I was and how grateful they were, and how keen a student the daughter used to be and how much she loved and admired me, blah blah blah… whereas the fact of the matter is, the girl could at best be called mediocre, she has never once met me or called me since the last day of class, and her mother and grandmother never so much as acknowledged me with a courteous nod on the street in all these years until Monday last, when they were in dire need of the sort of help that only a few softies like me are kind enough to fulfill in this great big town full of rich, educated, healthy people, all very proud of their ‘status’ deriving from fancy cars in the garage and sons/sons-in-law in Umrica, civilized qualities of character be damned.

And on Wednesday morning, while visiting somebody in his third floor flat (I was literally dragged in, and they were too nice and insistent to refuse without being rude), I met a man in the lift, both of whose daughters used to be pupils of mine in years gone by. Not only that, I have lost count of how many times they and their parents visited us out of class hours to tell me  about all kinds of woes, seek solutions to all kinds of problems, and generally weep over my shoulder. The man studiously looked away, not giving the slightest sign that he knew me from Adam.

Immediate need over, that’s the way most people behave with me, the same people who come in droves to admit their kids every year. I hope many of my readers can recognize themselves and their parents in these lines. I know their grouch is that I publicly refer to their type as chhotolok, riff-raff. Given a lifetime of such experience, can I really be censured for having developed a very jaundiced view of mankind? Tell me honestly, what would you have done  in my place? … and to those who might ask ‘Why do you do charity, then?’ my answer is quite clear: For the good of my own soul. As a rule, I couldn’t care less about the people whom I do good to. I do not hate mankind, but I most certainly despise a very large part of it.

P.S., Jan. 12: Swami Vivekananda would have been 150 today. Country-wide celebrations, of course. I choose to maintain a confused and rather shamed silence. All I can do.