Fifty for Four.....

Fifty for four –Not a Cricket Story.

Now if you have come here thinking that is a post about cricket sorry to disappoint you it is not. The one about cricket is actually going to be my next post. This one is about more mundane matters like the shenanigans which goes on in the name of social service. I know, I know, I keep harping on this same topic again and again, driving you away, but bear with me, I need to de-tox a few festering thoughts from my mind and let go of the angst and anguish I feel. And what better way to do it then to blog about it. So here goes.

Yesterday I was at an orphanage for a free medical camp. There were four of us on the medical team - two children's specialists, a general medicine specialist and me. When we introduced ourselves to each other the other doctors said, only half-jokingly, that I would be the one with the least amount of work to do- just to check the kids and write the prescriptions for unlike them I didn’t need to deal with the sort of diseases which all kids carried. But in that they were mistaken as I ended up getting more and more patients than the others simply because the kids were very bright and as soon as they realized that I was the only one who was actually glad to be there for them while the rest had come for mere formality's sake, the kids started lining up in front of me even for diseases I was not supposed to treat. This did cause some muttering and murmuring among the other doctors but in the end they just let it go because after all it was less work for them.

So dealing with the large crowd of kids in front of me was a satisfying but tiring work and took all day till I finally took a break for lunch. When I enquired among the orphanage people for nearby restaurants- it was a new area for me and I had no idea where to go for lunch, the man in charge made, I suppose, a half-joking proposal that I could share their noon meal with them. To his surprise (horror?) I immediately acquiesced enthusiastically and went down to the common dining hall where all the kids were lined up with their plates. I grabbed a plate too and joined up the line in the back while the other doctors made faces of disgust and signs of vomiting at the quality of the food served to the orphanage kids and went away to a nearby "decent" restaurant to have their lunch after advising me to start antibiotics immediately for the umpteen number of diseases I was likely to get after eating that food.

I disregarded their prejudiced advice and stayed on with the kids and soon I was served with the same one scoop of lemon rice and one scoop of curd rice with lime pickle the orphan kids (all my patients) were being served and I sat down to eat with them in a sama bandhi bhojanam style. I didn’t do it to make a point to anyone else; I did it simply because I felt that for that one day at least I should share with their lifestyle, Oliver twist style. We take many things for granted in our lives and bitch about silly things all the time and it takes such occasions to open our eyes and show us the truth of the privileged lifestyles we lead. I was happy with that simple meal mainly because of the enervating company all around and I went back in a fully recharged mood to the auditorium where we had arranged our medical camp for the post lunch session. 

Meanwhile the group of three doctors who had gone restaurant hunting had returned in quite a bad mood from the local restaurant they had selected for their own lunch. They came up to me and asked me "hi did you eat that slop only from their kitchen or did they give you anything else?” I answered truthfully bewildered at this line of questioning "I only had what everyone else had". Then one of them piped up "Did you know that the volunteers from the NGO who had arranged this camp had ordered fifty full meals (packaged meals) from the Adyar Ananda Bhavan (a costly restaurant) for the camp participants and the food had been delivered here while we had gone away?". This was a surprise to me too and they could see it on my face so they started giving me more information "The cost of the food has been added to the camp expenditure account says the orphanage in-charge which means that the food has been written on our account- as if we had eaten it". I was perplexed at this creative accounting "but even so why? Why fifty meals for just four of us? And that too without informing us about the meals being ordered?” The child specialist was livid with rage "Exactly my point, why should we spend our own money to have our food when we are just doing charity work for free? Shouldn't they have given us food for the service we do".

I started to argue with them regarding the absurdity of this statement - given that what they earn in fees for a month would probably run the orphanage for a year but on reflection kept my mouth shut as I was sure they wouldn't understand the fine distinction between doing something with expectations and doing it for gratis. Anyhow the main point of interest here was where had the fifty meals gone and to clear it up I requested the orphanage staff to ask the two lady volunteers who had arranged the camp to come up to us so I can ask them what was going on. So imagine my surprise when I learned that the two lady volunteers from the NGO had taken charge of the food parcels and had already left the orphanage for their office concluding their business here for the day.

Well, I accept that given my limited knowledge I don’t really know what goes on behind organizing these kinds of camps and how accounts are written and settled but it seems to be a bit farfetched to write down fifty meals for just four of us and meals which we hadn't even seen too. If they had needed fifty meals for their home office why hadn't they ordered it to be delivered there directly? Why wait to take delivery here and leave with them? Or did they just write down the number in their accounts without ordering anything? Mysteries more puzzling than my limited imagination can give me answers for.

But what I can’t digest is that the money which such ngo's spend for these kinds of charitable events is our money - the common mans money which people like you and me donate for the needy. It’s not throwaway money but money which we could use too for our day to day life to make our lives better but instead we make the conscious decision to donate it to someone who needs it more than us. And money is not earned easily (not unless you are a politician) for I have known people, like my friends from the it industry, who work twelve straight hours a day not counting the two hours spent on commuting up and down the OMR corridor from their homes -who donate their money (as they have no time to donate) in the hope that some good may be done to society from their hard work and sweat.

To take that kind of hard earned money from unknown goodhearted individuals and to misuse it like this seems a betrayal of the worst kind to me. Nowadays social work seems to be a code word for eating off the rest of society. The kind of people who are involved in social work are mostly crooks and misfits who cannot earn an honest living anywhere else. And they seem to come up with creative plans for tugging at our heartstrings to fill their bellies with luxurious foods while poor little kids starve. I know it’s not fashionable to have a conscience nowadays but I wish such social cheats who champion the cause of the unfortunates with sweet words and make use of gullible people like you and me- just for once look in the faces of those kids- kids as young as five and six with no parents, no roof and no food before they steal the food from the mouths of such kids.

On the other hand if they had even a little conscience they wouldn't be doing social work would they? They would be doing some honest work, earn money and then do social work with their own money, not go around with a begging bowl asking for others money. So what do you think?

Why I Would Love To Kick Social Activists And Other Do-Gooders..

Why I Would Love To Kick Social Activists And Other Do-Gooders - Plus My Philosophy Of Life, Generally.

There is a folk tale told about the wise man Tenali Raman and King Krishnadevaraya of the Vijaynagara Empire. When the kings mother dies without getting her last wish fulfilled of eating a mango before her death, the king asks the priests how to propitiate his dead mothers soul and the priests' advise him to honour his mothers last wish before dying by giving mangoes made of gold to all the priests. When the King's Minister Tenali Raman hears of this he invites all the priests home and brands them with a hot iron rod saying it was his dead mother’s last wish to be burnt by a hot iron. The priests and the king learn their lesson that even good deeds have to be intelligent deeds.

I am reminded of this story whenever I see a social activist trying to drum up support for "Causes" by playing on people’s guilt. As someone who works in the government medical sector, I get invited to a lot of causes by Ngo's and social activists. Barring a few, a very few honorable exemptions (like rain in the Sahara desert) the rest are merely doing their social activities for gain -either monetary or for social standing among their peer group.

At a recent NGO's office I visited, there was a large wall map of the globe with pins stuck on it on a dozen different countries worldwide. When I enquired about the pins the lady in charge proudly explained that it showed the number of countries they got donations from -"in dollars" the woman proudly explained. I asked her then, genuinely puzzled, if she had all that money "in dollars" with her why was she angling with me to organize a free medical camp by recruiting my friends informally while she could as well hire the best doctors and buy the best medicines to give at camp- at market rates- after all the dollar was now at stratospheric heights compared to the rupee.

She hemmed and hawed and said it was against the policy of their NGO to buy things- they only distributed things they get by free donation. My next question was, in that case what happens to all those dollars sent from those dozen countries? She told me with a straight face that the money was spent on "Administrative expenses". Puzzled i asked naively "what administrative expenses?" for from what i observed it didn’t look to be large enough an organization like NASA to require all those administrative expenses. She took pity on my ignorance and said "you know, staff salaries, vehicle expenses, fuel, food and sundries" and i mentally added to that list- centralized air conditioning, staff meetings over dinner at five star restaurants to cry over the starving masses etc. I nodded my head in understanding- getting it at last- no wonder its so expensive to take care of the poor and unfortunate- there are so many administrative expenses to take care of first. 

The above example is not one of its kind and not an exception at all - by and far it is the norm when it comes to NGO'S and social organizations. Which is why I politely but point blank refuse to participate in any free medical check up camps organised by any social worker -professional or amateur. Those who come and preach to me about how medicine is a "noble profession" are the very same ones who behave so ignobly in their lives and interactions with everyone else.

On the whole, I don’t buy this "You are lucky that you are so fortunate, so you have to suffer in remorse for those unfortunate" line being peddled by social activists and do-gooders. I have a brain of my own with a well functioning cerebrum, cerebellum and medulla oblongata and it tells me to apply reason before guilt.  My reason tells me that as an individual I am responsible for my own troubles and as I cannot lay the blame of my own failings at the feet of others they too cannot lay their sufferings at my conscience. Playing the blame game is going to get me nowhere if I am not willing to accept responsibility for my condition and by my actions make a difference to my own life first. Or I could wallow in self pity and blame everyone else. It’s a choice I have to make every single day when I get up in the morning and face sunlight. Laying the blame on society is pure cowardice, according to my way of thought. 

To confess the truth, I did not really come to this conclusion suddenly. It took me a long period of time to learn to use my gift of reason and see the truth as it is and not till my teens I learned to trust my faculty of self reasoning above all the preaching by others. When I was a school kid I had the benefit of twelve years of a convent education under priests of the catholic faith. Every Friday, the good fathers used to thunder at us about the sins and iniquities of mankind and how privileged we all were when compared to the less fortunate. The way they told us kids - the only way to come out of sin was to surrender at the feet of Jesus, grieve for our advantages and work for the poor. I so want to believe that the poor fathers must have practiced what they preached but I never can remember seeing a thin starving father (priest) who suffered by proxy for all the starving children of god. The fathers were all fat, smiling and prosperous looking despite their obvious discomfort for the suffering masses of people. Maybe their suffering was all spiritual and never bodily.

Anyway this constant reminders of our guilt for the less fortunate’s around us, had me one day reaching for the source code of it all- the Bible- where I found this profound advice which changed my whole outlook on this preaching of guilt process. The episode I refer to involves Jesus feet being washed by a woman and one of the disciples chides her for wasting the oil by anointing his feet which could have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor. Jesus rebukes the zealot and tells him "the poor will always be with you, I will not". Reading those words straight from his mouth was a light bulb moment for me as I realized then that the poor will always be there and it was no fault of mine. It just was reality. The world was made like that- there would be prosperous people, there would be poor people and nothing can change the fact of their existence- not even god.

When the reality of it all struck me the scales fell of my eyes and I looked around at society with a new understanding. Unfortunately for me I was living in a socialist country at that time. The India of the late 80's and early 90's where I grew up was a communist country in all but name. As all socialist countries do, Indian society (and polity) punished exceptionalism and rewarded mediocrity. The Television channels were all state owned and were full of documentaries showing starving kids in Somalia and Sudan with big protruding bellies and sunken ribs with the subliminal message that said "see - their governments let them starve, at least we, the Indian government give you food for your bellies even if we dont give you anything else resembling freedom of thought or action". 

As per sound communist doctrine- perfected in Russia and China, when the population was reduced to a fight for their very existence then they would have no energy to fight for other rights like freedom of thought or expression. It was a grim sobering time in the early 90's where the only inspirational thing I remember was the story of a college dropout who went onto found a company in his garage and made it a success- Bill Gates of Microsoft fame- a man who put the lie to the entire Indian Governmental Policy of - we are a developing nation and we will stay a developing nation where people fight over raw necessities and can never dream of success on a global scale. If Mr. Gates could make it from his garage then i could do it too, was the take home message I got from his story.

Anyway the point of the above story is that slowly but surely I developed the faculty of critical thinking and reasoning. I refused to swallow lies and propaganda- be it from anyone- figures of authority or people I trusted. With time solid reasoning became the benchmark with which i made all my decisions. The truth became my goddess and honesty became my religion. And I came to the independent conclusion that no individual could be held responsible for all the inequalities of society. All these public service messages by NGO's and social activists about the needy and unfortunate suffering because others more fortunate are not helping them was suddenly revealed as just another form of indoctrination like what religion and politics preach but dont practice.

My clear understanding of the lies of communism showed me the truth that no one could be a slave to the needs of anyone else. Each man’s life is his own to live and he need not needlessly sacrifice it to any cause thought up by self-appointed arbiters of  morality who sit in judgment over their fellow men in committees and societies (or as NGO’s). Blaming others and blaming society for all the ills suffered by individuals is just taking the easy way out and not facing reality.  Reality is Reality. You cannot change facts even with the best of intentions. Every man starts with the same basic advantage of humanity. What he does with it defines his life. And so the only obligations we have to contribute to our society’s needs is by way of personal example, by living our lives to the fullest and happily. To say otherwise is to bind men into slavery with sweet words and noble intentions - but slavery nevertheless.

To conclude my argument- in the end we cannot save everyone, we can only help humanity by helping one person at a time starting with ourselves. Save yourself first before being presumptuous enough to save the rest of mankind. Are you happy with your current life, pleased with where you are on your life’s journey? If so, your happiness can itself serve as a lesson to all those wallowing in the depths of misery and self pity. To be a beacon of happiness to guide others through the dark times of their lives- is what I decided to do with my life. Always living positively despite all the doom and gloom of everyone around me is what I actually do every day. It’s not as easy as it sounds- but I try.

So the next time any of these social workers come to me and try to play the guilt card to society by espousing causes to me, they are going to get a good long kicking up their backs.. be warned.