Donate blood and it can save some one’s life. What can be a greater cause than saving someone’s specious life? As I am not a doctor saving human life every day, whenever I find chance to donate blood I take the opportunity imagining my blood can bring smile to some one’s life. So every year 3-4 times I donate blood, mainly in the blood donation camp organized by the NGOs.
Yesterday was such a day when I left my office for a blood donation camp and I was bit like corporate donor as the NGO appealed our company to send volunteers for blood donation. So with few of my colleagues, we reached the camp and as we were “corporate” donors, we got extra attention and special treatments. There were two queues, one for different corporate houses and one for the normal people. The crowd standing in the corporate line looked as usual "white collared", healthy, neat and clean and polished while people standing the other line seemed poor, thin and their dresses were dirty. People in our line purposefully kept a distance from them as they were stinking. I was noticing one guy in that line, about 50 years old, very thin, very shabby looking waiting for his turn impatiently. Once the donation was over, we being “corporate” guys got special food dishes when the other line got the customary bread butter, egg and banana as their blood donation “gift”. When we were enjoying our biryani (company sponsored), there was a mess in the food distribution for the other line, people were fighting for their plate and there was a chaos going on.
I noticed the thin looking middle aged man was getting nervous as he was not able to collect his plate yet. Once I was done with my biryani, I saw he was still waiting, irritated. I came forward and asked him what happened. He said this organization (NGO) was not managing it properly and hence there was the chaos for food, people had to fight for their plate. He just came from another blood donation camp in his locality and there everything was very much well planned and he did not have to wait so long for his share of food. I was shocked to know this was the second time he was donating blood in the same day and I asked him whether he informed them that this was his second turn. He said he was not that fool. I said it was very much dangerous for his health; he could faint out anytime for extra blood loss. He said nothing will happen and this was not the first time he was donating twice in a day. I asked him why he was doing that. He pointed his finger to the food distribution desk where the mess was still going on. He said today he missed his morning local train to go to the construction site where he was working as daily casual labour and the contractor would have already taken someone else in his place even if he would catch the next train.
I felt a deep pain in my heart. I asked our HR guy (who accompanied us) to arrange something for him. Yes, we have two extra plates of biryani as two of our colleagues did not turn up and we were about to distribute that to some stray dogs. The smile I saw in his face with the biryani plate in his hand was something that I could not describe in writing because letters and words could not justify his feelings. Our car was waiting and we left for office. I looked back one more time to see him sitting under a tree and enjoying the food, don’t know when was the last time this poor chap would have tasted biryani!!!
Great going India, we are truly becoming a world power, our economy is flourishing, our currency is getting stronger day by day. I thought his last smile was a sarcastic smile to the great Indian economy boom.
