March last year, my mother was admitted to the hospital and was given just 48 hours to survive. After 2 days in the normal ward, sometime during the midnight, nurses flocked into the room and kept monitoring her BP and heart beat. I was trying to study for my final exams and couldn’t concentrate obviously!
Over the years, I have gotten used to hospital smells, the nurses’ faces and most things associated with the very mention of a hospital. Those moments of fluttering activity around my mom was enough evidence that she was not going to be in that ward for long. With an arduous task of lifting her and transferring her to a stretcher, she was rushed to the Intensive Care Unit.
Those few hours till day break were hell. Two hours after she was taken in, the tension within me broke out for reasons unexpected. About 50 people walked into the hospital with two men on stretchers. All I could see was blood, cuts, open wounds and parts of their clothing. The moans and groans from them was the only confirmation that they had some life in them. They were rushed into the very same ICU where my mom was lying.
I watched two women among the 50 odd people wail, and little kids, sleepy eyed, and completely unaware of what was happening. My heart went out to them as this was not a case of natural illness causing pain but an inhuman act causing much more than sheer pain. Each of the men present in that group looked no less than rowdies; one yelling, one abusing, one making calls and the others fighting with the poor security guard whose job was in jeopardy for allowing so many people into the ICU almost at this hour.
Both were operated upon the following day and all ICU visiting hour rules were broken. People walked in and out like bees in spite of the hospital staff doing as much as they could. I did not dare ask anybody what or who caused this sort of bludgeoning to the men. When I walked into the ICU to see my mom, I’d take a peek at the beds nearby to see if the men felt any better.
But we could not take the torture beyond two days. Eventually I requested my mom to be shifted out to another hospital as the tantrums thrown by the so called friends and relatives of the injured men were disturbing all of us. I later got to know that the two men were real estate businessmen with local rowdy connections to help them with their dealings. As in the movies, one group had a misunderstanding with the other and bloodbath followed.
All this I managed to bury deep not because it involved blood and other gory material but this phase involved my dear mother and I wanted to wipe it all off until today when it all came back.
This morning in the local newspaper, I read about a rowdy being done to death by another gang in front his of own family - wife, children and sister. It evoked two emotions in me:
1. Good a rowdy got killed. It makes it one less now.
2. Pity for the family. He’s a bread earner after all. And watching the head of the family being killed or for that matter, any family member, is agonizing.
Why choose to go the wrong way? I was watching this show on prostitution and the ladies involved always blamed their bad upbringing, abusive parents and so on. But why did she have to choose this way? She could have chosen even a sweeper’s job and kept her dignity intact!
Similarly why choose to be a rowdy when you know you have a loving family back home? Even if you were single, you have just one life to live, why can’t you be something more dignified instead?!
All that will remain in the minds and hearts of those family members who witnessed the gory act is pain, anger and more anger. This may also induce the next generation to avenge the pain caused. Instead if there was no rowdy, no anger, and all the other negativities, the kids would have grown up to be righteous people unless otherwise.
There can’t be good always, but then we all can follow the age old saying – BE GOOD DO GOOD!
