More such writings from journalists, in stead of dwelling on news of crime, will help rebuild the caring communities we once had in Assam. This is how Guwahati was when I grew up there and she can again be. It needs a group of caring citizens with a vision for Guwahati and a resolve to keep working despite the distractions around.
I don't know Acharya. If you do, please encourage him to write regularly on such topics. The article is from the Sentinel.
Dilip Deka
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City of settlers with caring humans, not automatons
Pradip Acharya
Little Sneh didn�t particularly like school. He was no different from the others. But the harrowing experience he had had somehow, obliquely, proved that he was made of sterner stuff. He got on to the wrong bus for school. The route the bus took was vaguely unfamiliar, and then frighteningly wrong. It may be taking a detour, he thought. After all, he was a city boy, he was alive to the traffic rules or misrules or jams. He wondered, and then, panicked. The pupils, the occasional commuters, the conductor, and the driver were alerted. They cared. After dropping the other pupils at their school the driver made another detour to leave little Sneh home. He was seven. Now, only the other day, there was Purushottam, aged eleven, forlorn, hungry and terribly ill, exposed to the cold on an alien veranda of some trading point in Silpukhuri. The passers-by were more humane than busy. They noticed the plight of the boy, stopped to comfort him and dialed ten-eight-nine. An ambulance and still more caring people came to whisk him away to expert medical care. He readily recovered, may be to oblige the young woman who was fervently praying, � now, please don�t die on me. Purushottam was escorted back affectionately to his parents from where he had come to serve someone here in Guwahati. T-n-eight-nine is Childline. Guwahati may be the dirtiest of cities, it may only be a growing village, but it is peopled with live, caring humans, not automatons. It is not for nothing that they talk about a global village, not a global city. Despite the unabashed thirst for cyber spaces, the nostalgia for the community still lingers. A village is home, it means security and reassurance, and, but for the sky there are no fancy spaces. Guwahati is predominantly a city of settlers. They have their roots in the village. The soil-reek is still there. Strangely and reassuringly human things continue to happen here, for the sense of community and its abiding values still persist in its precincts. Being sustained by the elements, their concerns range over the whole of creation. They believe that man had not always been primary in the scheme of things. And they are mightily thrilled by the discovery of a haven for the heavenly butterflies right in the heart of their city. A troupe of zoologists and researchers from the University of Gauhati has identified this habitat in the inner recesses of the Garbhanga reserve forests, only a few minutes from the Basistha temple enclaves.
The term community is now bandied about and loosely used. They talk of a community of teachers or doctors or professionals, but that is more a life-style enclave than a community. A community has to be a complete association of humans and it has to be self-sustaining. It must be made up of people who manage all needs of life, � from chores to concepts. Only when there are members in a group to wield brooms and concepts can it claim to be a community. In times of crises such communities readily evolve. But crises are a costly affair and they are, fortunately, short-lived. It is the inculcation of and persevering in certain universal human values that alone can give us now, while living in cities, a sense of an abiding community. We often say, �Have a heart� and that is what it precisely takes a heart. Without that we cannot even begin to be concerned. I remember that person, hardened by city living who had called out to Father Hippocrates in agonized prayer, Father Hippocrates, I have a strange disorder, I have no heart. But we have just the remedy for that. Cover yourself in damp earth. It dries first where the warmth is. Dig there. It is the question of a place in the sun for every one: I have set, as one might have fruit, green loving on a sill to ripen. � To cause the sun to move quickly and quietly to my window.
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