Gift Someone Life As You Die
It’s time for serious introspection. “Scores of people die every year waiting for organs, but nobody cares,” lamented Jack Kevorkian, the famous US pathologist. It’s typical India apathy playing out when we keep those in need (of an organ transplant) waiting forever, and in vain. There are many among them, like young Faisal from Ahmedabad, who wastes precious money and time in taking interim measures. He spends hours undergoing dialysis every week at a city hospital, when he should be at school, or better still, playing with his friends. The cure to his suffering is a kidney transplant. Alas! The situation is grim. There are too few givers for too many takers. One shudders to anticipate Faisal’s fate. More than five lakh people die every year for want of one organ or the other due lack of donors.
To give is to receive. Giving is central to all religious faiths. The value of life is not in its duration, but in its donation. It’s not important how long but in how many people you subsist.. Donating wealth is great; donating blood is greater. But greatest of all the gifts is a human organ. It is simply gifting life. In a way you play god. Organ donation is one of kindest, noblest acts of compassion and selflessness. It’s only when we give a part of ourselves that we truly give. One should not lose sleep over who gets the donated part. Will you ask questions if you or a near and dear ever needed one? That’s it.
Let me clarify: you are not giving the organs right away but, for the present, only pledging them. They get harvested only when they turn unneeded by the owner in case of a brain, accidental or natural demise. After death, our body is no more than a waste. ‘Dust thou art to dust returneth’. But it can be a treasure-trove to those moving back and forth between life and death, going through excruciating wait for an organ transplant. An angel like you can turn their gloom into hope. Do you believe in miracles. I do. There is one a dead body, that includes yours, can perform. It can give a new lease of life to eight fellow beings, long after you are gone. Imagine the prospect where a blind sees through your eye and your heart beats for a young life, literally. The sheer reflection of giving someone hope should spur you on.
Organ donation suffers for the myths we inherit and nurture. Another reason for huge demand-supply gap is our lackadaisical approach towards all things salient. We think we are here for good even as others around us take a bow through God’s, timely or otherwise, intervention. Many of our noble intentions remain on the drawing board for this one damning weakness. The thought of organ donation, like many such others, resonates continuously with us but someway remains just that, a thought. We develop amnesia when there is time for action. As an upshot, there are 1,50,000 hopefuls awaiting a kidney transplant against a measly 5,000 people who have registered to donate them. Roughly 18 patients die every cruel day due lack of organ donors. It calls for serious introspection.
An organ transplant is the only hope for a multitude of patients suffering from life threatening diseases. But there simply aren’t enough organ donors. And it is this uncertainty of finding a donor that leads to despair often greater than the illness itself. Let us put ourselves in their shoes and picture how it feels. They wait for humanity’s intercession to pull them out of death’s jaws. And we cling onto a kidney, liver, heart et al that is not entirely ours, and what is more, is redundant to us once our soul takes flight. All our possessions, body included, are a creation of ‘cause and effect’, giving all around us partnership rights over them. We are not sole owners but a trustee. Use them and pass on.
Have I been able to talk you into it. I hear a yes! Now don’t procrastinate. ”He gives twice as much good who gives quickly,” said a saint. If you are convinced, convince others. File your own registration as a donor right away. Kill the wait before it kills someone faraway.
Let me conclude with couple of beautiful lines of Henry Burton: Have you had a kindness shown? Pass it on; ‘Twas not for thee alone, pass it on.
Om Namah Shivay
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