During my childhood days, rural folks longed for an apartment, flat or house in the urban and semi urban settings. Few of our neighbours moved to towns as there were better facilities in towns such as convenience of shopping, 24 hour electricity, piped in water, access to the highways for travel, etc. Fifty years later the reverse migration is the trend. The cost of flats and houses in town and cities are high that one has to spend a life time paying back housing loans. The Non Residents Indians who work overseas mainly in the Middle East Countries buy property in rural areas, where it is cheaper to buy and build. There are at least five such houses in our neighbourhood.
Anna and I travel along the rural roads fifteen kilometres before we reach the hospital where we work. During the last seven years we have noticed about forty palatial houses that have been built in scenic settings.
In this culture, a house has a statement of status and visibility. The architectural style is largeness and not minimalistic at all.
I heard an architect mention this in a casual conversation. We seem to build larger houses than what we need because that is the norm.
It is the same instinct that has affected the church congregations- to build larger worship houses.
Is the need that is often governing us or something more!
A young consultant mentioned yesterday about the importance of visibility for doctors to enhance their image. It is common for doctors to buy expensive cars because it enhances their worth and acceptance. It does not matter if more than half of the salary is needed for paying back the car loan. He asked me if it was like this in my younger days.
At the Christian Medical College, Vellore there was only one doctor who had a car fifty years back. Most of the senior doctors travelled using the public transport or college owned buses or their bicycles. I know of a director of the institution who did not own a car. He continues to be like that even after retirement.
I grew up as a medical student watching some outstanding doctors with a sense of detachment from material affluence but with a liberal heart towards being charitable towards the disadvantaged. Until recently the doctors were paid in CMC Vellore only half of the salary of the doctors employed in the government service in order to reduce the overheads and maintain the hospital tariff at an affordable level. The institution designed an impressive contributory pension scheme in the seventies to help doctors save to have at least half of their salary as monthly pension on retirement.
We live in a setting of much material pursuit and primacy for creature comfort.
I remember Dr Frank Garlick, an eminent surgeon at CMC Vellore who gave his position to travel to meet doctors in mission hospitals to help them update their surgical skills. I recall Dr Ray Windsor, who relinquished his career in cardio-thoracic surgery to help an organisation to recruit professionals from developed countries to go to developing countries its as doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, etc to give a push to development and resource creation!
This is my wish even now! To make a difference in the lives of others by our good will and availability.
Three families who came for consultation yesterday remind me of this human story- one family with their four year old child with multiple needs due to birth injury, another with their fifteen year old girl living in a hostel since five years of age as she has an autistic profile with co-morbidities and a third family with their thirteen years old child with significant learning difficulty due to the sequelae of meningitis in the newborn period. They were at their wits end.
I wondered whether these stories touch me enough to be creative and proactive in my responses! As I drove back home yesterday with this thought, I stopped at a shop to buy bread. The shop keeper told me that he has fifteen loaves of bread left, where as he would have normally sold thirty loaves on an average day before the stay at home order due to COVED 19 infection. People do not have money to buy because they do not have their daily income since the 'lock down'! I wondered how a daily wage earner lives with no income!
This is a season, when all of us have to look beyond our needs and comforts- it is a time to be neighbour friendly!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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