Count on me

Jasmine Singh

Harish Muri, 37, a labourer from Darbanga, is attending his 22-year-old brother at the Post Graduate Institute Of medical Sciences (PGI), who is suffering from a brain disease, ‘keeda sir main’ as he calls it. He is here with his wife and another relative. The nip in the air is more pronounced as compared to three weeks earlier when Harish came from his hometown. With a chaddar and a small rajaai that he has purchased from Sector-22, Harish is not prepared to face the approaching cold of Chandigarh. However, he is expecting the ‘kambal man’ to leave him a blanket while he is sleeping, at the premises of PGI.

This kambal man, he’s heard from many people, comes every winter and leaves blankets by the side of the attendants sleeping at various places inside PGI. None knows about his whereabouts, but they vouch for his existence, and his good deed. “Aise log bhagwan ka roop le key aatey hai,” Harish adds.

Apart from this anonymous kambal man, there are many who do good deeds and don’t want to get any publicity for it. For such people, charity is a soulful exercise, not driven by any motive. Even though around this festive time, one would often hear of many do gooders doing a thing or two for people, there are many who have made charity a part of their existence irrespective of time or day of the year.

No reason, whatsoever

Tai ji aka Surinder Kaur and Retd Col Balbir Singh from Khuda Ali Sher and Dera Bassi, respectively, are two such people who do not have any answer to the question as to what makes them to do charity. “Does one need a reason for it, or do you think it is some kind of redemption that one takes to after some sort of realization,” Col Balbir punches in. As for Tai ji, as she is known around Sector-16 hospital, “seva nishfal kiti jandi hai.”

Tai ji is often seen moving around the corridors of the hospital with an old utensil (pipa) that is filled with nutritious kichddi for those accompanying the patients admitted in the hospital. She doesn’t talk much about herself, Tai ji has been doing this for almost two years now, and she hasn’t missed a single day since. “Sometime, I just sit near the gate and look around. When I see someone needy, I pour the kichddi into a disposable cup and hand it over to him,” she adds, scared that if the doctors come to know they would have her entry banned. “Unha nu lageyga ki koi zehar hi de davey kichddi ch. Ajkal loki parosa ghat karde ne,” she takes a realistic take.

More than often people who offer charity do it for a reason, mostly to add brownie points to their karma, and then there are others who have been asked by astrologers to do so, while others seek redemption through this. But people like Col Balbir or Akash Puri, 29 and his mother Promila Puri, both residents of Sector-44, neither want to ‘clean’ their karma and neither have they faced any adversity in life, which stands as a reason behind their charitable tasks.

Because I want to

It is of course a bad medical situation that brings people to hospitals and medical institutes for check up, but it is the family members and relatives accompanying these patients, who have to do the running around, and not everyone can afford a private ward in a hospital. Promila saw a kid crying in the premises of PGI a year back. The kid was crying for burfi, but his father couldn’t move because the doctor had categorically asked him to be around. “I cried seeing this helplessness, I fished a toffee out of my purse, Next day, my son and I got packets of toffees and gave it to the kids accompanying patients,” Promila wouldn’t want to talk about this much but after much coaxing, she adds that they have been regular at this for an year. This mother-son duo distributes sweets, laddoos or mithai to people who are accompanying patients, and for them this is not charity. “It is god’s wish and we are fulfilling it. Time can change any moment….,” adds Akash.

For Akash it could very well be a realisation that has dawned on him pretty soon, also another reason why people take to charitable acts, but in the end what matters is a selfless step, expecting no gain!