GOT up this morning to a very pleasant day, with my peepul tree leaves back, my birds chirping happily, and the coffee almost perfect, when the wife, a doctor, called out, “Busy today?”
“Not really!” I said innocent like, not realizing I was walking into a trap, “Finished all my writing yesterday!” I even smiled pleasantly thinking of the relaxing day ahead, when the bomb dropped, “Then let’s go to the hospital. Do all your annual checkups!”
Nothing in my voice or tone could persuade her, as like a reluctant schoolboy on his first day to school, I walked behind her into an environment, home to her, “He does look ill!” I heard colleagues whispering silently as they looked at me and more at her with half pitying looks.
Patients, suffering from the most severe of diseases, looked up as I passed and gave me cheerless looks, and suddenly the confidence with which I’d greeted the day, started slipping away, “I’m okay!” I wanted to shout, “I don’t have cancer or cirrhosis or even blood pressure!” But suddenly it seemed no one was listening as the stares by everyone said, “You are sick!”
As I sat, waiting for my turn before my Echo was taken, and before they found out to my nearly victorious yelp that I was okay, as I sat on that cold steel bench, and saw the looks of others looking at me, like a sick patient, who should be shouting, ‘unclean, unclean’ like the lepers of old, I realized that many in our country felt the same I felt.
They had got up to a country which belonged to them which they shared with others to whom the country also belonged to, and suddenly came a group of people who started going around saying, “You are not us! You are different!”
Suddenly, today, in order to garner votes, millions are getting, the ‘not sick but at the hospital,’ feeling as even without being sick they are made to feel different. They are branded different, even been told they can be identified by the clothes they wear and gods they worship, and then even worse, others around are told they are different. “But we are not different!” they cry, “We may worship another way, dress another way, but we are absolutely alright: We are just like you!”
Do you hear their shouts? Because, as I sat, waiting for my turn before my Echo was take on that cold steel bench, and saw the looks of others looking at me, like a sick patient, who should be shouting, ‘unclean, unclean’ like the lepers of old, I realized that many in our country feel the same. Let’s not hospitalize the healthy, let’s not brand anyone different: That’s the only way to remain a healthy, vibrant nation..!
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