Who is your neighbour? (Part 1)

The recent tsunami that hit India and neighbouring countries has raised the issue as to who is one’s neighbour?

In this three part short blog article, I wish to touch on this as it has affected me, Annikki and some of our family, as well as many many loved ones.

When we moved to India in 1969, it was Annikki’s first experience in a third world country. She saw great and wonderful things around her. She enjoyed fabulous company, food and riches, as a family wedding was in progress in Bombay.

In all the hustle and bustle, she felt she should share some of this wonderland that she saw with her parents and friends in Finland. So we went and bought some small gifts to send to them.

Ammachi, my late mother, advised us to pack the gifts and send them from the Malabar Hill Post Office, as the staff there were more competent in handling such postings because of the large number of foreigners staying in that locality.

Annikki happily packed the presents. I drove her to the post office with the kids in tow - Susanna being just 2 years and Jaakko being less than a year.

I went into the Post Office to send off the parcels while Annikki and the children waited in the car.

It took me about 10 minutes. When I got back, I found Annikki was very very quiet.

I saw a tsunami of tears streaming from her eyes.

I wondered what had happened. I looked around to see if anything could have troubled her or the kids, both of whom seemed quite happy. I SAW NOTHING.

When I got in the car, I asked her what the matter was. First, she did not say anything. Then she pointed to a little girl in tattered clothes carrying a little baby, in even more tattered rags.

That was Annikki’s first encounter with a beggar.

It moved her deeply to see these little children on the broad and beautiful hill street in a rich neighbourhood in such horrible clothes and going from car to car, begging for something to eat!!

In my initial glance, I had not even noticed this ragged little girl and baby. I WAS BLIND.

Being brought up in India, I had been immune to such sights. The scene passed over my eyes without a second thought. Such poverty and tragedy as depicted in the little girl was something we, and many many Indians, had not the eyes to see, the ears to hear or the mouth to speak!!

What was I to say, now that I had noticed it? I knew it existed - but I had been conditioned to not notice it and to ignore it. How could I explain to Annikki that this sight would be repeated a million times as we lived in India?

How would one be able to sleep at night knowing how one’s fellowmen, little children like these, were lying on the streets, being exploited by their parents, and the rich would abuse them and pass them by.

Being a person of Christian upbringing, the question as to who was my neighbour as well as the parable of the Good Samaritan passed through my mind.

I seemed to know what was passing through Annikki’s mind as we both looked at that little girl, probably a couple of years older than Susanna, and the baby, probably the same age as Jaakko.

At that moment, there was nothing to be said. It was time to act in our own small way.

I made a mental resolution that I would not accumulate wealth for myself or my family at the cost of these poor. We would go out of our way to help any of these little children who came across our path, in some small way, not by encouraging their begging, but by making some contribution to their lives which would help them irreversibly.

I made a decision that when any child, rich or poor, crossed my path I would show kindness and not the hardness that some of the strong show to the weak.

In the next 15 years of our stay in India, I think both Annikki and I kept to the norms and standards we had set for ourselves in an unspoken way on that occasion. Maybe we contributed, in our small way, to the upliftment of the weak with our work at our home and in the Madras South Rotary Club, one of the finest Rotary Clubs that I have ever come across and was proud to be a member of for several years.

Later in life, when I was offered the chance to become a Rotarian in another city, I refused. None of those clubs I visited had the personal dedication to the ideals that Annikki and I had set for ourselves.

We did not do anything for credit or glory. Most of it remains unsaid and unsung, the way we had intended. To get publicity of praise was not our objective. As defined in our good book, when there is an act of charity, let not the left hand know what the right hand has done.

(To be continued...)