The Man On Platform 3 – Is Helping Cultural?

The dishevelled man was being dragged on his back by a railway employee across Platform 3. The employee then proceeded to try to roughly shove the man, probably homeless, and clearly in distress, onto the train that was about to pull out.

My son Oscar and I had just got off this same train and were about to head home. The passengers staying on our train refused to let the employee ‘stow’ the guy on their train, being as dirty and smelly as he was.  The scene was bizarre.

After a few enquiries we established that the employee was a cleaner and simply wanted to ‘clean up’ the platform for which he was responsible, by sticking this filthy and injured man on the next train out.

The homeless guy was filthy and smelt pretty bad. On closer inspection he also had an awful looking wound on his lower leg – about a foot long, three inches wide and maggot infested. I thought I could see the bone. I tried to talk to him, but he couldn’t communicate. It seemed as though he probably had significant mental health issues.

As much as I just wanted to go home, after having been away for a while, it was one of those moments where my conscience wouldn’t let me go. So Oscar took our gear home while I tried to get help. I spent the next two hours trying. It was perhaps the most frustrating, infuriating and depressing two hours of my year.

First, I tried the Railway Police, whose job it is to make sure the station is peaceful and safe. I informed the officers of the guy on Platform 3, injured and in a very bad way. They weren’t terribly interested. I increased my level of insistence, until they sent another cleaner to fetch a stretcher and to bring the guy. The cleaners and I tried to get him on to the stretcher, but he didn’t want to move. I guessed that he was afraid of the police who, in India, aren’t known for their compassion. 

What should I do? I don’t like forcing anyone to do anything, but this guy was so badly injured, I thought he could die right there on the platform, so I decided to press on. When we still couldn’t get him onto the stretcher, I pleaded with the police again to help. Reluctantly they sent one junior officer who ‘helped’ by standing at a distance with a handkerchief over his nose, directing the cleaners to get him on the stretcher. 

Eventually, the cleaners (who, by the way, were both addicted to glue sniffing) and I got the man onto the stretcher and wheeled him outside the main station complex where we found an ambulance waiting (I assume the police had helped to that extent). 

The ambulance driver then refused to leave until someone ‘cleaned up’ the guy. He complained that he was dropping blood and maggots in his ambulance. More cajoling (and some yelling) from me, and the police ordered the ambulance to take the man to hospital. The following drive was a bizarre scene: whizzing through the streets with me the foreigner in the back of the ambulance trying to calm the injured man, and the ambulance officers and police office in the front, faces covered with handkerchiefs.

On arriving at the hospital I was instructed to stay in the back of the ambulance with the injured man, while the ambulance officers went off, presumably to get a stretcher. They didn’t come back. Meanwhile my injured charge, conscious enough to know he didn’t want to be here, opened the door and hobbled off. I followed, all the while pleading with hospital staff and bystanders to help me get him to the emergency department.

Beside myself, I phoned my other son, Tom, to come to help. When Tom arrived ten minutes later, we and two hospital staff, helped get the guy to the emergency department, where a doctor eventually oversaw the man’s treatment.

The whole episode was very sobering for me. Over the past two hours I had requested perhaps 15 police, ambulance or hospital staff to assist someone who was clearly in trouble. Only a very few of them actually helped. The others showed either apathy or outright disdain for the injured man. I’d also asked perhaps another 10 bystanders to help. All refused. 

I found myself thinking, “Surely if this had happened in Australia someone would have helped!” What is it about India that causes such inaction? In debriefing the incident afterwards, some Indian friends suggested that ordinary people are afraid to help, lest they be blamed for the situation. I can understand that, but it doesn’t excuse people whose jobit is to help. I know that the caste system and notions of religious purity are also an issue: people not wanting to make themselves ‘unclean’ by touching someone so obviously dirty. The Good Samaritan is an obvious parallel. So, I wondered, is willingness to help actually a culturally determined thing? A couple of months later, I’m still sobered by that thought.