Cheat everyone you can…..

….. no one looking around!


Venu Eye Institute, New Delhi, December 1998.


A cute school girl in her early teens comes with her blind parents: She leads them - her mother holds her shoulder & father holds mother’s. The trio needs help to ensure they don’t bump into the furniture in the passage. Parents had disfigured blind eyes, (we term such eyes pthysical or atrophic).


The child needed an eye examination. The parents did not have any idea what a healthy eye was. Having been blind all their lives, they were alarmed when the child told them she had an eye trouble.


They came to us for a second opinion fearing their child had an ailment that is in some way inherited and she would be blind too one fine day!


But the child only had an episode of viral conjunctivitis that would heal in a week’s time or so.


They were difficult to reassure.


Apparently they had been told by some practicing Ophthalmologist that the child had imminent blindness – it required treatment that was expensive!


The cost of treatment of viral conjunctivitis in India is just around Rs. 50-80, which is less than $2!


Question that baffles me:

It’s bad enough to be blind. Why did the consulting doctor try to extort money from a poor blind couple?

India is a deeply religious country where people pray to appease their respective gods.

They go to temples in the morning & then they go to work to do "diverse activites". No guilt, no insomnia?

Why?

Was President Kalam frisked….

Was President Kalam frisked….

The Continental Airlines has apologized. Or so is the news. The question that remain are

(1) Was he frisked?
(2) If so, how does it matter o a common man?
(3) Why this hype, especially if the man himself chose to be quiet over the issue.

My random thoughts over the issue:

Knowing what the former President, Mr. Kalam is, I was not surprised the way he responded to the issue. It was a graceful response. Should he instead have chosen to argue with the airlines authorities? I disagree.

Why did the airlines treat him the way they did?

Mr. Kalam is not Narendra Modi, who was denied an American visa recently.

Mr Kalam is not Kurt Waldheim either, the late former Secretary General of the United Nations who went on to become the Austrian President and eventually denied entry to the US for his pro Nazi past.

When another former Indian President, Mr. K. R. Narayanan was asked in Paris if he was “untouchable”, he had addressed the issue by politely saying, “I am just the President”.

An Indian former President is just that – a former President with whom I associate my national pride. Mr. Kalam, the people’ president has a Pan Indian appeal, that is what I would like the Continental Airlines to know.

Compare our former President with some others across the border:

During President Zia’s martial law in Pakistan, Cops fired and killed a dog, since some one painted, “I am Zia” over his body!

If you circulate an SMS joke about Mr. Asif Zardari, they now have a provision of fourteen years’ imprisonment!

Go further ahead and compare the simple life style of Mr. Kalam with those of Mr. Silvio Berloscuni or Sarkozy and you would no why he was the people’s President. Sarkozy reportedly spends around £ 660 over flowers for Carla. Berloscuni indulges in things that will put Bill Clinton in shame!

If instead of Mr Kalam the airlines had chosen to rub any of the petty politicians of Indian origin, such as the one obsessed with erecting her own statues across her state, it would not affect the common man that I think I am.

Someone rightly said that Air India wouldn’t treat Hillary Clinton the same way!

I don’t fly overseas, but would like to remember the Continental Airlines so as not to board any of their flights.

An infrequent flier.