What makes the common man shed tears at the suffering of others, empathise, and feel different? You can see the odd nurse or cleaning boy in hospitals who does much more than their duty demands and is paid for. I have seen this in the attendants who took care of my invalid brother for many years. Their selfless work, attending to their very personal needs for years, which even very close relatives would avoid over time, made me wonder what makes these simple people transcend to that higher plane of kindness day after day, year after year, without expecting anything in return.
No, it’s not money or scripts. The realisation came to me like a slap in the face while attending an Annadana at KIDWAI hospital. A lot of people, including NGOs, sponsor this daily ritual, some physically, but many in absentia. If you happen to walk in, you may pick up a conversation with some of the patiently waiting, hungry men and women. They are attendants for the cancer patients in the hospital. Almost all of them look impoverished and, at a guess, are looking forward to the only meal of the day. The small crew who were ladling out the food to them in the queue knew almost every one of them and had a nice and comforting word or two for all.
At the end of the service, when the crew was alone, we offered a small tip to the crew. Almost in unison, they refused politely and said, "If you are here every day, you’ll love this opportunity to be with these nice people. Spending days together with their wards, most of whom are acutely fighting terminal cancer in general wards, makes them melt at their suffering. We listen to them with deep empathy. Money and tips look very meaningless to us."
Those who have read Shindler’s Ark or seen the later version of Schindler’s List by Steven Spielberg would have been moved by the way Oskar Schindler, a Nazi industrialist, saved a thousand refugees from the clutches of certain death in concentration camps, risking his own life and his earnings, and afterwards fleeing from his station to escape identity as a German by the liberators. The greatest honour was being buried in Jerusalem.
Witnessing suffering brings the milk of kindness to the majority of fellow humans.