Skip to main content

Where has trust gone?

I will be discharged soon from the hospital where I remained confined to my bed for the last ten days with a fractured foot.  One of the precious lessons I learnt during these helpless days is that too many people are losing trust in systems including medical services.

Hospitals carry out unnecessary tests and even surgeries merely for profit. This was the opinion of the vast majority of my visitors. Most foods are adulterated. Education is sheer business today. Most people seemed to have little trust in any system.

The present wave of patriotism that is sweeping the country also came in for much ridicule. The decision about demonetisation was leaked to people who matter. The foulest souls are preaching the noblest ideals like patriotism and need for self-sacrifice for the sake of the nation. Comparisons are drawn between the suffering citizen and the warring soldier. I imagined my wife as a Rani of Jhansi as she shuttled among her workplace, home, my hospital and merciless ATMs. The TV showed me a retired soldier being slapped by a constable maintaining discipline before an ATM. My country folk stood with reverence as the high decibels of the cinema halls blared the national anthem before the movie began. Patriotism surged in my veins.

But in the privacy of the hospital room people came and went cursing the nation and is varied hells.

One young friend said, "Even religion is business today.". He knew about certain religious people who whitened their invalid currency with the help of some of their staff and others.  Then he was in a hurry to leave.  Because the evening ritual in a particular religious place was about to begin and he had to attend it.

I lay in my bed looking at the bandage around my foot. Only my foot is broken, i consoled myself. 

Comments

  1. Wish you a speedy complete recovery. Health care, religion ... you name it.. everything is a business...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Durga sir.

      Regarding the commercialism, I believe people are going to rebel soon against certain systems at least. Or maybe there will just be winners and losers.

      Delete
  2. I strongly believe that we,humans are pretty good in raising fingers. We very easily keep blaming rather then taking any action. Get well soon.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's easier to blame than take action. But it's also true that india is changing in undesirable ways.

      Thanks for the wishes.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Shooting an Elephant

George Orwell [1903-1950] We had an anthology of classical essays as part of our undergrad English course. Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell was one of the essays. The horror of political hegemony is the core theme of the essay. Orwell was a subdivisional police officer of the British Empire in Burma (today Myanmar) when he was forced to shoot an elephant. The elephant had gone musth (an Urdu term for the temporary insanity of male elephants when they are in need of a female) and Orwell was asked to control the commotion created by the giant creature. By the time Orwell reached with his gun, the elephant had become normal. Yet Orwell shot it. The first bullet stunned the animal, the second made him waver, and Orwell had to empty the entire magazine into the elephant’s body in order to put an end to its mammoth suffering. “He was dying,” writes Orwell, “very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further…. It seeme...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Urban Naxal

Fiction “We have to guard against the urban Naxals who are the biggest threat to the nation’s unity today,” the Prime Minister was saying on the TV. He was addressing an audience that stood a hundred metres away for security reasons. It was the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel which the Prime Minister had sanctified as National Unity Day. “In order to usurp the Sardar from the Congress,” Mathew said. The clarification was meant for Alice, his niece who had landed from London a couple of days back.    Mathew had retired a few months back as a lecturer in sociology from the University of Kerala. He was known for his radical leftist views. He would be what the PM calls an urban Naxal. Alice knew that. Her mother, Mathew’s sister, had told her all about her learned uncle’s “leftist perversions.” “Your uncle thinks that he is a Messiah of the masses,” Alice’s mother had warned her before she left for India on a short holiday. “Don’t let him infiltrate your brai...

Raging Waves and Fading Light

Illustration by Gemini AI Fiction Why does the sea rage endlessly? Varghese asked himself as he sat on the listless sands of the beach looking at the sinking sun beyond the raging waves. When rage becomes quotidian, no one notices it. What is unnoticed is futile. Like my life, Varghese muttered to himself with a smirk whose scorn was directed at himself. He had turned seventy that day. That’s why he was on the beach longer than usual. It wasn’t the rage of the waves or the melancholy of the setting sun that kept him on the beach. Self-assessment kept him there. Looking back at the seventy years of his life made him feel like an utter fool, a dismal failure. Integrity versus Despair, Erik Erikson would have told him. He studied Erikson’s theory on human psychological development as part of an orientation programme he had to attend as a teacher. Aged people reflect on their lives and face the conflict between feeling a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction (integrity) or a feeli...