Postscript to urgent appeal

I am writing a postscript to the previous post, and the postscript is being written in a far more sombre mood than the original.

The good news first.  The day I put up that post, the fund had attracted a princely donation of five hundred rupees; within two days of my appeal, it had topped one hundred thousand (the latest figure is about Rs. 142,000+). The great bulk of this amount has been contributed by a relatively small number of my ex students (and some parents of current students): the kindest and most decent of them, needless to say. My grateful thanks to all of them. The husband of the sick woman is ecstatic; he keeps telling me how thankful the family is, and that this amount was beyond their wildest dreams. That is good. The chemotherapy can at least be restarted immediately.

However, they are managing to make me feel deeply inadequate and guilty, because it is only too obvious how small the amount raised so far is, given the size of their need. It is also making me feel very bitter to think about how little success I have had over a lifetime of trying earnestly to persuade thousands of young people to grow up into socially useful, sympathetic, giving human beings, rather than merely ‘successful’. If a few more hundred of my ex students (and the parents of many hundred current students) had contributed generously, the fund would have already grown to ten times what it is, at least. It seems that a family jaunt to MacDonald’s or a cinema which costs them more than a thousand rupees is perfectly par for the course, but donating the same amount or a little more to save a person struggling to fight off untimely death is a horrific excess! May many people learn how important it is to help out others in distress only from going through the same experience with their most dearly loved ones: in this heartless world, I don’t think there is any other way.

I would never ask for monetary help for myself. I have known poverty, I have slogged for four decades to rise above it, and I prefer to put my faith in karma, or God, as you will. What I deserve I shall get no matter how many people try to stop it, and what I don’t deserve I won’t, no matter how much I pray, or how many pray for me. However – call me schizophrenic if you like – I also believe that if we all cared a little more for our fellow human beings, especially those in distress, not necessarily financial – it would go a long way to making a nicer world. One of my lifelong endeavours has been, therefore, to create a network of good, caring people, who make friends with one another, stay in touch regardless of their own troubles and woes, and help one another out in times of dire need. That was one major reason why I started writing this blog. Some old boys had suggested that in this internet age that would be a very good way of staying in touch. It didn’t quite work out that way, but let that go.

I have also been able to help a lot of people, mostly ex students, all through these long years, when they were in trouble, either through direct personal intervention (counselling, giving a patient ear to their laments when no one else was willing to listen, lending money, etc etc) or by putting them in touch with other ex students who were in a position to give a hand. Many of my readers know that they have been beneficiaries, though some of them would like to forget their debts – not to me, but to humanity, to God. (It has never ceased to amaze me how frantic and insistent people become when they are in serious trouble, and how quickly they forget once those troubles are behind them, how indifferent to other people’s troubles they can be). If the network were wider and stronger, I am sure that a lot more people could be similarly benefited. So I was wondering whether I should make one more effort to bring together the best people I know, my most beloved old boys mostly, in the hope that something good will be ignited. A platform where a lot of people will be able to make friends, wide apart in age, education, experience and location, but united by a common desire to make real friends (rather than ‘frenz’ on social media), interact to ward off one of our commonest, most painful problems – to wit loneliness – and help one another with every kind of gesture: attentive time, money, counsel, mentoring, being there when no one else is, I hope you get it. Do you think I should start off a Whatsapp group specifically with that goal in mind? Those of my readers who are interested – adult, earning their own keep, preferably my own ex students – should let me know, here via comments or directly by Whatsapp.