Once in a month I go to a temple, and last Sunday I went to ISKCON as part of my monthly ritual and the moment I entered the gate, I saw two men carrying an old lady on their shoulders. I paused for a minute and noticed that the lady could hardly stand on her own, let alone walking on a normal surface. I saw these two men requesting the lady guard to body check the old lady and allow her to be taken inside the gate from the men’s entry once her checking is done. These two men never denied the checking or asked for leniency in security checking. They were just pleading to let the lady enter through the men’s gate or let them enter through the women’s gate after they’re checked at the other gate.
What followed after that left me upset for the day. The lady guard listened to none of their pleas and convincingly told these two men to let the lady stand on her own. She said nothing would happen, and if it did she would take care. There was another lady standing at the gate who seconded the first lady guard. As the fate of the old lady had it, the men let her at the mercy of the guard. The lady was standing with the guard’s support and the moment this guard bent down to check her, she uncontrollably fell to the ground. To these lady guards this was so amusing, they could not stop laughing. I rushed to help that lady, and by that time these two men too came close..as they had sensed this fall.
I felt bad and could not stop myself from arguing with these two insensitive lady guards. When I told them that they must not make fun of it..they said, bhagwan ke ghar me girna to achcha hai bhai sahib (it’s ok to befall at god’s place, brother)..I also felt bad as why do these people not understand it is not important to come to such places, no matter how divine or virtuous it might be when you are humiliated in such a way. Why on earth one must struggle to access divinity.
But why people come to such places is my least concern. I am more concerned with the insensitive attitude of the staff. Just because one cannot walk on her own, she should be deprived of her wish to move to the place where she finds some respite. Must she be confined to her home? We talk of equality, universal accessibility, infrastructural growth…boasting of our growing status in comparison to the west and this is how we treat those who are as important to the society as we are. This reminded me of the struggle of one of my mentors, the founder of accessibility. Now I can feel how difficult her fight has been, mainly because she has to fight against the indifferent and insensitive attitude of people rather than mere lack of infrastructural resources.
But I believe in happy ending and though this incident left me disturbed for the day but it also pushed me to seek corrective action from my end. I took the pledge, I will not expect others, the society, the government machinery or the people concerned to act but I will definitely do my bit.
