How would you, as a parent, react when you learn that certain values you cherish have actually rubbed off on your offspring and that they have, unmindful of consequences, gone to the rescue of a victim caught in a potentially abusive situation?
Frankly, when I heard from my son of the event that took place that weekend, I was terrified. Not because of what happened (nothing did) but what could have happened in the uncertain social climate in our cities and towns these days, when the aftermath has often been traumatic for the good Samaritan.
The story unfolds when my son who lives in town failed to turn up for his usual weekend stopover at our place. When I called him he said an ‘incident’ had occurred the previous night and he explained when he arrived later in the day. He and his friends were about to part ways on Saturday night, when a woman with an injured bleeding arm approached them for money for her fare home. Convinced that she was not faking it, the three friends took her to a nearby clinic where my son paid for her and treatment. The attender at the clinic recognised the woman as a menial worker in a nearby corporate hospital. In conversation with the hapless woman, she told them that her 8-year-old son was asleep alone at home; her husband, an autorickshaw driver, was in the habit of often disappearing for several days at a stretch, and she had no idea where he was now.
By now it was well past 2 am and the other friends decided to call it a day, but the third thought he had one more task to do – get the lady home. He hailed an auto (rickshaw); the driver, despite the woman’s obvious plight, demanded an exhorbitant sum as fare to the short distance to her house. At this point, my son, tired and sleepy and anxious as he was, lost it. He said he grabbed the driver by his shirt and then everything was a haze. The next thing he remembers as he came out of the haze was a few people pulling him away from the other man whose face looked bloodied. Another auto was stopped, the woman and the attender climbed in, and the young man accompanied them on his bike and exhorting her to tell her husband to meet him on his return (even though he knew that would never happen).
During the narration I noticed my husband start agitatedly at least twice but I restrained him from bursting out with a tactless lecture. Our son ruefully concluded that he wished he had not lost his temper, but he couldn’t take the driver’s insensitivity to a fellow-being’s plight and his lack of sleep only made matters worse. Why are we Indians becoming increasingly callous and uncaring, he wondered aloud.
I spoke then. I asked, while I appreciated what he had done, did he ever think of the dangers he could have got himself into? Has he not heard and read enough about mob mentality and lynching — fortunately the attender was around to explain or he could have been attacked. Secondly, I was glad he was smart enough not to sit in the auto with the woman; one could not be too sure of the victim’s credentials and a young man caught with an unknown married woman could have spelt doom and disaster for him. His father’s reaction invoked memories of a friend who, years ago, had stopped for a young schoolboy thumbing a lift home. On the way they met with a minor accident where the boy was injured. When he reached the weeping child’s home, some neighbours raised a cry that he was being kidnapped and the friend was attacked viciously.
My story does not end here. The following Sunday, the young man saw a car rashly reversing on to the street where it rammed into an approaching car. The woman driving the car and her young teenage daughter were thoroughly shaken and their car badly dented. In India it is unusual to find apologies being offered or an amicable exchange of insurance details. Instead the man began shouting at the lady when she asked that he pay for the damage. When my son got out of his car and politely explained to the bully that he had indeed not looked while reversing, the man directed his anger at him but the do-gooder remained unfazed. He was about to move on when in his rear-view mirror he saw the bully raise his arm to strike the woman. At this he jumped back into the fray and insisted the police be called on a charge of physical violence. By now a small crowd had gathered; the cornered man made a hasty retreat to his house, threatening my son with repercussions through his political connections (the familiar ‘I know people’ spiel). My son would not retreat, insisting that no man could strike a woman for whatever reason. At this point the police arrived and matters were sorted out.
Honestly, I don’t know whether to be proud or jittery. I am proud that my boy’s heart is in the right place and the values he upholds are those which make him the fine person that he is. I know also that there are many young people like him, but when I read of the fate of whistle-blowers and good citizens’ well-meaning acts being punished by irrational moral policing my entire being becomes cold.
Vimala Madon is a freelance journalist based in Secunderabad, India.
