Sunday, July 26, 2009

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?

2 comments:

  1. dear MJ,

    people pray to god, take a dip in the holy (??) ganges, and than they are scot free to commit further sins.
    there is nothing called as alittle or bit of conscience. its there or not there. we have a saying for such people in marathi
    "melelyachya talu varcha loni khanara manus"
    meaning a person who will eat the butter on the forehead of a dead man ( during the last rites)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree Kaustubh, its all or none.

    ReplyDelete