Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Let us stop for a while on the highway to lend a helping hand

Last month after attending a marriage at Erode, I and my friend were going towards Bangalore on a highway in a taxi. The car which was just going before us had hit against a Lorry and I heard only the sound .Fortunately, there was no major injury for the passengers of the Car. The Front portion of the Car was fully smashed .The husband driver had injury on the forehead and hand. The blood was profusely going down. His wife also had some minor injuries on the face and the blood was frozen and settling down like a ‘Tilak’ on her forehead. His father relatively well above the sixties sitting in the back seat was very badly wounded on the head and the arm.

When we stopped the vehicle and rushed back to see the site of accident and render help, that boy was seen quarreling with the driver of the Lorry and kicking him with his leg, unmindful of his own physical suffering and the family. The only consolation was that a small girl aged six or seven was least affected by the accident and was in a state of virtual shock. Nobody bothered about her finer sensibilities. Fortunately or unfortunately, the Car which had gone before the lorry had checked the driver from escaping the scene with his lorry .For quite some time the driver husband was more worried about punishing the driver and noting down the Lorry number and the wife was adding fuel to the fire by saying her husband to go and fetch the key from the lorry .On the highway so many vehicles were speeding up, halting for a while but nobody had the mental makeup to stop , watch and ask whether any help was needed.

We could not bear the utter insensitivity of the driver husband, who was in a world of anger and a kind of delusion. We forced the fellow to put his father in the front seat of our car and he squeezed himself in the backseat along with us. By divine intervention, within a few kilometers of travel there was a toll gate and an ambulance was there. Thereafter, it was their lookout and I don’t know what he did with the driver.

A few days earlier, while I was going towards grocery shop on a small by lane, I heard a deafening sound and I looked back. I saw two individuals, holding on to the respective scooters were shouting at each other. Soon I learnt that a person who was coming towards east on the by lane on heavy speed had hit the stationary scooter, which was held by some person. While hitting not only his vehicle got the beating but he also experienced heavy injury on his left or right foot. Despite my advice to him to go the nearby nursing home and take care of the wound, he was arguing with the other innocent fellow, whose only fault was that he was holding on to this scooter and trying to come towards the road. Soon, the person who hit was noting down the registration number of then scooter of the innocent bystander on the lane.

These two incidents at short time intervals taught me a lesson that, unmindful of the suffering and the injury caused in an accident to either side , there is always a feverish tendency to revolt and find fault with other party without realizing the crude fact that he is also a party to the incident. More particularly, only those who are at fault are the first one to pick up a quarrel and show their muscle power and the more saddening fact is that no one stops at the sight of the accident and stand ready to lend a helping hand. All of us should know that any one has a probability of being met with an accident and our own close friends might pass that way , without knowing that their friend is laying on the pool of blood.

1 comment:

Paul R said...

This is a good allusion to the story of the good samaritan. Let us all be good samaritans.