A Bulbul at the edge!

 

At the edge of a slender stem! The Bulbul balances with just one pair of its legs.

Yesterday, I heard the story of a family with five members sick at one time, three with COVID and two others due to ageing. The only working woman of the house was bearing the burden of this for the last three months. With her younger son showing behaviours of anxiety and stress she came to visit with no respite in sight for her. 

I hear similar stories frequently when families come to visit. It was this which prompted me to suggest to my colleagues about another effort to call all families who have visited us more than two times in a year and find out their state of wellness. A colleague prepared a list of sixty  people while scanning the visitors list for four months in 2019. We now have designed three questions and classified them into hierarchy of wellness to get a glimpse of the state of adjustment of families. 

With another surge of the pandemic in many places. the three groups of people who suffer most are families, work force, and health care professionals. 

To be at the edge in disappointment is a costly experience. 

A family in a conversation told me that they decided to turn the state of anxiety into a practical step of expressing solidarity with others. They do some baking  and deliver the goodies to families who live close by. During the Easter week end they had a virtual sing-song evening. 

The conversations have moved on from disappointing news to observations and discoveries between families. A family took the initiative to organise a virtual birth day get together for their daughter where the neighbours joined in enthusiastically. 

A pastor told me that the virtual meetings do not make much impact on his parishioners. He has been visiting people with due diligence. He felt the intensity of loneliness that people have felt. A family who ran a snack shop close to a college lived on the income from the sale. That is no more an income generating project now. They take orders for cakes and snacks and are engaged in home delivery. Yet they do not generate enough income for a four member family.

A neighbour needs about five thousand rupees for the expenses of his daughter to go to college every month. He being a mason has not been hired for many days at a stretch. His struggles are too many. 

I hear of community groups in some places who try to find help for people in need. With another long spell of the pandemic, people also would suffer from donor fatigue! 

The difficult times are not to seen in desperation. The difficult times give us an opportunity to find an alternative to live and help others. A college teacher decided to visit homes where a few students can gather to listen to his lecture rather than do it on Zoom. He does it in five different parts of the city. Since he started doing that students have a new level of enthusiasm. The teacher found that as a way of being in a mentoring role to students.  

We are fellow travellers with others. It is this consciousness which such difficult times can provide to make us more humane and relational. 

It is a recovery time from self absorption and pursuit of personal success!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)