17th August 1997

Today's Good Samaritan

By Smruti Koppikar

Someone is dying on the pavement. Make your choice. Either stop your car, pick him up - even though he's covered with festering sores and suppurating wounds - put him in the back seat where he'll stain the covers and drive him to help. Or just look, wonder about your new covers, feel pity - if at all - for a second and then move on. Most of us, for a variety of reasons, drive on.

Shabbir Soni always stops. That is enough to make him unique.

At first glance Soni is no different from anyone, there is nothing arresting about him. Bearded bespectacled, he is just another businessman in Mumbai, a successful dealer-retailer for paints. He is a believer too ("I do my namaz") but religion, he says, has nothing to do with his concern. It's just that while other men believe they are compassionate, Soni actually is. It is that simple. He has helped set up a blood bank; he takes disabled children on picnics; he has started the Anand Ashram, a home for 65 abandoned children. And he always picks up the dying from the pavement.

These telephone numbers, 37737762 and 3743441, are familiar to thousands in Mumbai. It is a helpline, and whenever anyone sees a person in distress, they call Soni is the man at the other end of the line. In a soft, staccato voice, he asks for precise directions, thanks the caller, leaves what he is doing and gets into his car. Soon he is snaking through the maddening Mumbai traffic as fast as he can. He must reach as soon as he can. When he arrives at the spot, he attempts a conversation; sometimes he is met with quiet acquiescence, often with mild protest. In tatters, covered with dirt and burning with hunger, an uncared wound oozing infections - this is human life in its most obnoxious form - he takes the person to the nearest Asha Daan centre. In the home run by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity, another dying destitute will be cared for till death claims his life.

Five times a week, often thrice a day, Soni does this. In a city driven by a million motivations, compassion and commitment are still his companions.

Why should Soni be different? Did he have a traumatic experience when he was young? Is it God who decided he was well suited for this mission? In real life, things are often simpler. For Soni it was a matter of chance. When the Asha Daan opened in Mumbai, he just happened to be living nearby. When he observed the work of the missionaries, he thought, "If they can do it, why can't l?" Now, 21 years later, he is still drawing inspiration from Mother Teresa's work. He is the link between the destitutes and the missionaries and the key figure in the day-to-day functioning of Asha Daan at all its four centres in Mumbai. The sisters seek his advice and depend on his assistance - it could be a legal matter or simply a question of shifting a patient to another centre.

"If I have to leave the city, I have to inform the sisters," he says. The sisters acknowledge his invaluable contribution. As one says, "It's a pity there's only one of him around." Of course, the work is depressing. It used to traumatise Soni in the early days. Each time he helped a destitute to Asha Daan and settled him in, meant that it was going to be a tormenting night for Soni. But he soldiered on.

After all, today there is no greater joy than chatting with the same young girl he had cradled in his arms when she was dying outside a hospital 20 years ago. Predictably, his work has demanded sacrifice. For years he would use a fleet of ambulances to assist him, but perhaps they grew weary of his schedule, so he uses his car, equipped with water and blankets - the only concession for his family, which also uses the Omni, is that he carries an air freshener. Not that his family complains. His wife takes calls on his behalf and son Hussain even accompanies him to pick up the dying. Says the 13-year-old: "I want to be there. If I can be of some help to a dying man, it is nice, no?" Unarguable logic. It would be enough if it ended there, but for Soni playing on the side of life in its game with death is like some commitment. At the other end of Mumbai, bang in the centre of a huge stretch of cultivable land in Vasai, stands the Anand Ashram. Sixty-five young boys discarded by society call it their home. It is the only one they know of. Soni does not have much time off yet he spends five hours every Sunday in a rattling suburban train just to see them.

The boys are an assorted bunch - some picked up from pavements by social workers, some sent by organisations outside Mumbai some brought in by older ashram boys. They all live under one roof, study or acquire a skill, play fight and learn to share the small joys and sorrows of the world. Soni nurtures them till they are 18 year old enough to fend for themselves. He is quietly pleased that six from his earliest batches have found employment.

Tony Paul is their surrogate parent and Soni's half-brother. An orphan himself, who benefited from the Missionaries of Charity in his early days, Paul is the irrepressible, though somewhat naive director of Anand Ashram. He was scrounging on the streets when he came across Soni six years ago. The ashram is their dream come partly true. Paul wants to take care of every discarded child, Soni says their resources are not sufficient. The tiny building that they have was built on benevolence, with the two of them scrounging even boxes of tiles.

So what if 72 different boxes have meant a rather colourful pattern in their rooms? But at Rs. 600 a month for each boy, Soni has a tough time keeping the canteen fires burning. Yet when Dinesh screams "Come again soon uncle," as he leaves, Soni knows his effort is not wasted.

-India Today

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