Column

Hummingbird

This is a true story of 10 brothers.I heard it just this morning.

These brothers live in a village in India. Well, a one horse town to be exact, which is a village with a few pucca houses and a school and perhaps a hospital, but a village in all other senses of the word.

Where cattle ruminate on the streets, and fairs happen whenever there is produce to be sold and the villagers gather to buy and sell it.

It is a village in Madhya Pradesh, and the brothers with theirrespective families live together yet separate.

Which means that they live in individual houses that stand close to one another, in a complex a few km away from the village itself.

There have been no reports of familial battles, despite the norms set by television, and the families live in obvious harmony, supporting one another, making the most of their strengths and skills.

Each of the brothers is well-educated, and worked in jobs eitheras an engineer or a doctor or a government servant.

And though their education made it possible for them to exploit the system systematically, they did not do so, and remained comparatively honest through their working lives.

In fact they went one step further, and did their bit to help those lessfortunate. Now retired, they continue to make themselves useful to the community and feel useful in
themselves, by putting their experience to good use.

So the engineers ensured that every house in the village was given enough wherewithal, as required, in cash or information, to equip itself with a gobar gas stove.

The women in the village were spared the agony of burning eyes and choked lungs that wood stoves cause. Respiratory problems lessened. The bio gas also ensured that the green cover that the village had enjoyed a couple of decades ago would find a means of renewing itself and reversing the depletion that the search for firewood had caused in the past decades.

The two doctor brothers took on themselves the setting up of medical services for the village. They encouraged the sick to consult them and where medicines could not be afforded, dispensed them gratis. Theirefforts brought down the rate of sickness due to unhygienicconditions, malnutrition and poor sanitation.

In the process they also managed to instill in the villagers they treated, the rudiments of cleanliness, of the need for safe and clean drinking water, and taught them such
other home truths that make for a healthy life.

Thus almost every aspect of a society’s requirements was taken care of, from the environment to personal health; and as a result thevillage thrived and grew into one vast family in its attitude.

This is not to say that there may not be differences of opinions and internal tensions between families or groups; but by and large, the village has been given the title of a model village by administrators andobservers alike.

Today, the village, if seen from the air, the villagers claim, is almost invisible thanks to the green cover and the quality of life is what one expects of life in a city.

All thanks to the efforts of literally a handful of men? Well, they initiated the movement, and showed by example that if one gives freely of oneself, one can reap the rewards of a better community, a better environment and a better way of life.
(No, this is not a parable, but a true story.)

The brothers remain unsung, unknown, practically. But in their story is a lesson for a city that I think is fast degenerating into a place where the personal interest far outweighs the common good, and where the city that nurtures millions does not feature in anyone of its inhabitants’ lists of priorities.

I wish we could invite them to set up shop here and practice their mantra for peace and harmony and an ideal life. That I think would give us Mumbaikars the real ‘clean up’ Mumbai needs.

Email: ssaran@dnaindia.net