crowdsourcing life

For a long time, many dreams have been traveling to Mumbai from far away places. Many find something, and many keep finding.

Suryesh too had come to Mumbai, chasing his dream of earning a good life.

It was summer of 2011.

One day as he was busy in some chores of his electrician role, he received a panic call from his manager, citing an electrical blast. This was something the amateur electrician was never ever trained for. Anyways, he rushed to the scene. And by the time he could reach, the electrical blast had gutted a very large area.

Sometimes the wisdom of the crowd backfires. Because all kinds of people descend on the scene. Some enthusiastic, some too intellectual, some bravados, many don't-want-to-miss-the-action, etc. And because too many people want to do too many things, hence either nothing gets done or it negates one another.  

Six lives were trapped inside the affected area and were visibly fighting death. And nobody had a clue of handling this emergency. By his own account, Suryesh does not recollect what happened for almost the next 15 minutes. After which he could only realize that his body had taken burns in various parts and was about to collapse.

They say that while five men were able to come out with great difficulty, one man was completely frozen in panic. And Suryesh had simply just jumped inside the raging fire to rescue this man. Everybody kept shouting against this action but Suryesh kept going. Finally, the man was brought out.

However, Suryesh does not claim an iota of credit to this act.

He was rushed to the nearest hospital and the Drs cited an whole array of treatment, which would cost INR 170,000. Given Suryesh's background, this kind of money was extremely unimaginable.

While all this was happening, back there in the factory, the managers were busy covering up the incident and had successfully buying the sale-able loyalties of some lost souls, the government inspectors. And of course, this meant that they would not foot the bills for Suryesh's treatment.

As he lied in his body's pain, Suryesh could only breathe hopeless air as he knew that he doesn't have the money and that if it doesn't come from the company, he is likely to succumb. Before he could think, his eyes closed on its own.

And time traveled quickly. When he opened his eyes, three days had passed. He looked around. And he could feel his body. He felt treated. 

Later he discovered that almost 40 people had contributed whatever they could to collect the needed amount. These were men with human religion, human color, human caste, human skills, human intelligence and human heart.

Today, Suryesh drives his own autorickshaw. He has repaid more than half of this money and shall repay the rest too.

He says that yes, a lot of things are happening that qualifies the popular definitions of negative and bad.

But a lot of things are also happening that qualifies the popular definitions of positive, good and human.

Good Day. Good Life.