Dear Editor,
Disregard for human life is nothing new in society today; we all witness it every day, but the way it’s happening and to whom makes me so angry words cannot explain. There was a man by the name of Babu who lived all his life on the Uitvlugt Sideline Dam whom I would see often since I moved into that area about six months ago. He would normally give me a call and occasionally ask me for money to buy alcohol, or ask if I had any odd jobs for him to do for a price. Sometimes I declined to give him money because he would be by a place where I see a lot of people imbibing alcohol and would tell him I did not like the idea of giving my hard-earned dollars to be washed down in alcohol, but would promise to call him if I needed anything done in the yard. I never knew the man’s real name or bothered to ask, but would see him running errands for people and was informed by my neighbours that he did that for food and small change because he had no one.
On Saturday, October 9, I heard Babu calling and when I went I saw him trembling badly. He said he was not feeling well and needed $20 to buy tablets. Knowing all types of people and the tricks they have to obtain money from people, I called my neighbour who asked him how long he’d been like that and he said since yesterday, whereupon my neighbour started to row saying he was so sick now and no one was looking twice at him, but when he’s ok, everyone has uses for him and sometimes he gets nothing from them. I asked him why he didn’t go to the hospital which is a fifteen minutes walk away and he said no one wanted to take him. I told him I was going out, but I walked with him to the public road and said I would pay for a mini-bus or taxi to take him there. I was already late, so I went across to a vendor on the roadway and gave her the money to give him when a taxi came. I said I would check on him when he returned and buy the tablets if he had to get them.
I returned late that night and his relative didn’t know where he was. On October 10, when I woke my neighbour told me he had heard the man was dead. Whilst going out on the road I saw people busy building a tent and they said he came back from the hospital with a paper for tablets that he had to go back for on Monday. He had left the house to go to the funeral of a man who had drowned recently and after that he went to the wall and died there some time.
Editor, he might not be someone that society appreciated but in the end, he was human and it’s time people paused and thought about life – not theirs alone – and gave a helping hand to others. Had people given Babu a second look, perhaps he might have been alive today. Instead of rushing to help build tents, they should have tried taking care of him, especially people who loved to use him (or others like him) to work for them, so he could have a meal or alcohol. Things might not be easy for us, but we don’t have to live like that; we are all humans and have feelings. Have people ever sat and thought of the way neglected people feel, especially those who don’t have a family to stay with? I talk with lots of people similar to Babu, seeing the way they live and the things they do for money and food, and it would bring tears to people’s eyes, but then again they are not counted in society; the only time they are recognized is when they are wanted for cheap labour.
Yours faithfully,
Sahadeo Bates
