Socially responsible ??

CSR was close to being the most abused acronym, until the recent financial turmoil left most corporate philanthropists struggling to fulfill their primary responsibility – to churn profits for their shareholders! No, this isn’t another of those articles which delves into causes of the crisis or into ‘Why CSR’. This is about social responsibility. Not CSR, albeit PSR (Personal Social Responsibility- a term I first heard at a matrimonial interview last month)

Some wise man had said “All human beings are inherently good”. Somewhere down in our hearts all of us have that burning desire (though the flame is often close to getting extinguished) – To do something for our society, our place, our country and the human fraternity in general. I was no different. I was always a witness to elders in my family helping the unprivileged, partly due to PSR (gosh, then the term mustn’t have been existing) and partly because the Holy Scriptures asked them to do so. Whatever be the driving motto, the output was indisputably benevolent. Then was my exposure to Social Responsibility at two places, though the driving motto again wasn’t CSR/PSR. One was via my elder sister on her rural field visits. Here, while I was her kiddo brother dropping and picking her up, she was there for a course requirement, which she herself doesn’t know (probably even today) why she took up at the first place. My participation, under the banner of “Vandeep” at St. Xavier’s College, in various Plantation drives, was my extracurricular activity which was meant to be inflated and presented to my interviewers for MBA entrances. Whoever said Social Responsibility is a one-way flow of goods & services!

Of late, however, I have noticed a marked…..okay, a reasonable amount of change. This time I don’t see any explicit motto of self-benefit driving my actions. On at least four occasions, I have counseled a LIG family to focus on education and family planning. At one such instance, I went overboard and over did that counseling! I have been asking rick (what others call an auto rickshaw) drivers to work harder to educate their kids. I asked a Puchkawala in Mumbai to manage his work himself, and send his son to the govt. school. I have pacified fights in Delhi Metro twice, once when a lady who jumped the queue was taken to task by a male traveler, and the other one had the reverse flow of ‘words’ when a male refused to vacate a seat marked ‘only for ladies’, and a Punjabi lady ripped him apart. I have been talking politely to almost every Grade IV/ LIG employee from watchmen and liftmen to vegetable vendors and barbers in saloons. While this has lead to a marked change in my HQ (happiness quotient, which increased at my satisfaction of having “meaningfully contributed”), I am sure it would have made those otherwise ‘trifle’ people feel important and, I dare say, resolute.

I had no idea whatsoever that I would pull myself one day into mediating peace between a couple. This incident dates back to first week of May in Delhi. I was walking to the Rajiv Chowk metro station in CP after office when a gentleman stops me. “Sir, this lady has lost ******** (even I missed the word, honestly), can you please help her”. I turned my eyes to find lady in early 30s, red-faced and ready-to-cry. She was holding her daughter, and the poor kid was crying aloud with one hand being held hard and the other hand holding an ice-cream which was diminishing in size without being consumed. I stopped. The mother-daughter duo looked lost in the busy streets of CP. Not sure of what I heard, I offered the lady my help or if she needed a cell phone to call some acquaintance. The lady was awestruck. I insisted on offering help. The man replied “Don’t worry. She’s my wife and she lost the contact number of her cousin whom we were going to visit. Now she’s gone mad and is shouting at me. You please don’t worry”. I had hardly made any sense of that when the lady pounced, “You Rascal.” I couldn’t believe what was happening. Was that for me, no why would anyone (even an insane looking lady for that matter) slang a passerby who only committed the crime of offering genuine help? No, it was for her husband who was trying to make joker out of his wife. I stood speechless for few seconds. The lady drove her daughter’s hand and started walking towards CP (towards the direction where I was coming from). The man stood where he was. I tried following the lady to a few steps yelling something. Perhaps, I wanted to say ”Mam I am sorry for him”. Thank God I didn’t (mouth those words). The man waved at me and followed his wife, munching the groundnuts he was carrying. Enough of it, I thought, and moved briskly towards my station. I stopped, thinking that maybe I should have done something to sort things out. Whoa! I continued my walk leaving the couple to their destiny and mutual understanding. What else was I, a lad of 21 who’s yet to have a successful relationship (okay, yet to have his first girlfriend), supposed to do to help a couple who had been married for at least 6-7 years.

Fortunately or unfortunately, that was my last major ‘encounter’ and the PSR thing has been put on hold since then. Till I get a new motto to continue…