Random Thoughts

Hope, despite everything

by Ranjita Biswas | @twfindia 02 Nov 2022, 04:44 pm

We are living in a strange time beyond familiar ‘normality’. Climate change creating havoc with unseasonal rains, furious floods, hurricanes looming like a Damocles’ Sword over hapless citizens, forest fires, heat waves in a cold continent like Europe –the list can go on. Not to talk about Covid 19, return of old world diseases like cholera, Ebola, etc. etc.  Old timers in India wonder if the dreaded ‘Koliyug’ is upon us in our lifetime itself when the fabled Lord Koli descends to destroy everything  on his way.

It might well be, as invaders talk about nuclear weapons, and subsequent proliferation by other countries which have the weapon, something post -Second World War generation thought would never be mentioned again after the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Yet, amidst this uncertain, gloomy time you get a glimmer of hope when you come to know about people who are trying to make a difference to fellow people’s lives with their humanity, thoughtfulness, and farsightedness. You read about a teacher, a farmer in Bihar’s hinterland,  Rajesh Kumar Suman, who teaches students for free in his coaching institute on one condition- as ‘admission fee’ each must bring 18 saplings to be planted  in the surrounding area.

This way not only would the students learn about the value of trees in preserving the environment but also would green the land, the 34-year-old environment and climate-change activist says. His BSS Club, started in 2008,  has coached  more than 10,000 students with help of volunteer teachers. Many of the pass-outs have secured government jobs and placed in well-known private companies. His students vouch for the life-changing experience their mentor teacher offered them.

You read about Dr Shankare Gowda of Karnataka, a skin specialist, who has been treating rural patients for decades for the princely sum of rupees five! That’s how he has come to be known as the ‘five rupees doctor’. He found that some poor people could not even afford that paltry amount and so he included in the ‘package’ consultation, treatment, injection- the whole regimen.
And to think that the bills handed over to the patient on discharge from super- speciality hospitals these days is more likely to cause a heart attack than the ailment itself.

You read about Jadav ‘Molai’ Payeng of Majuli, the largest river island in the world in the midst of the Brahmaputra, which has been facing erosion for decades,  afforesting a whole  patch of the island. Trees also grip the earth with its roots and prevent erosion.

As a 16-year old Payeng started planting a tree sapling a day in the barren soil around his village. Now after 40 years his forest covers 1,390 acres, named in his honour as Molai forest.  The son of a buffalo trader from a marginalised tribal community, his feat has earned him a Padmashri award and his example is cited in university lessons in the US.

You meet the diminutive Subasini Mistry, an illiterate vegetable vendor, who dared to dream of establishing a hospital in her village in Thakurpukur, south Kolkata, because her husband died due to lack of treatment. With her savings were laid the first bricks of the modest Humanity Hospital, which has now bloomed into a multi-speciality hospital offering free treatment to poor patients. She moulded her son as a single mother to become a doctor who heads the institution now.

It is important to know about such people, working quietly in the hinterland, away from the limelight, serving humanity, to reestablish faith in humans, to help caste away cynical thoughts that the world is on the brink of destruction. Because,  if  there is evil, there is good too, as the history of mankind tells us.