On the first anniversary of my formal retirement from professional responsibilities in a hospital, after forty five years of work in six different hospitals, I look time to revisit experiences and the journey path. It was with this inner orientation, I spent time watching the butterflies gathering around the lantana bush in our garden, during the in between dry spell on a rainy day.
It was a festival time for the butterflies. It looked as if they were in desperation to find nectar. They moved between flowers and I noticed that different butterflies visited the same flowers. There was not enough nectar for all the butterflies. Theirs was an effort to find just enough that was still left in the flowers.
My first monthly allowance during my internship was four hundred rupees in 1974. That was more than I paid for my medical education, when the fees for a quarter was four hundred rupees. That was therefore an occasion to feel grateful. That monthly allowance was just enough as one had to pay only around one hundred rupees in a month for having two meals from the hostel canteen.
Fifty years later, I know how the upper middle class and the middle class live indulgently drawing fat salaries. My parents who were teachers drew four hundred rupees salary in a month in the late nineteen fifties. It was only in the mid sixties it doubled.
In a presentation in the Indian parliament, I heard that about 20 percent of the population in India still live, struggling to exist without jobs, regular source of income or support during time of illness or other emergencies. A cobbler who sits at the pavement, has been on this job for thirty years. His daily income when he started was about thirty rupees. It is now about two to three hundred rupees in a day. With about two thousand rupees in a week, he struggles to sustain the family of five people.
The butterflies kept looking for flowers for their nectar. A Section in our society in India, depends on the meagre income to sustain themselves. In a country when we are still struggling to offer welfare measures from the state, to those who need social security, the nectar of the essentials for daily living is far away from their reach. This takes place in a country which is starving to be third largest economy in the world. The prime minister o this country exalts himself for the growth in GDP where as, the per capita income remains far below the subsistence level of the 20 percent of the population.
What pained me while on a reflection on the stress of living, is how churches who get regular income from their members, spend little to offer welfare services to people in the community.
The nectar of daily needs is not within the easy reach of many people. On the doctor's day yesterday, a national news paper had four pages with messages from doctors with their photos. The list of the best hospitals mentioned in different categories and specialties were in the private sector, whose services are beyond the means of those who do not have insurance support.
I realised how we live among people, whose nectar in life is distant from them!
It created within me a new awareness about the stress of living! I look forward to nurture this consciousness. If we reduce the level of creature comfort, we save enough to be mindful of others. Those who do not have, drown themselves in debt which is another burden to bear!
The butterflies were messengers of a reality. I carry the message to live more responsibly !
M.C.Mathew (photo and text)
No comments:
Post a Comment