Why do you see the mote in your brother’s eye and not notice the beam in your own?
—-Jesus Christ Matthew 7:3
The whole issue of migration to a different land is a class issue. We are not talking about the great mass of illiterate and semi-literate people who have dreams: we are talking about those who have made it and are professionals of some sort… those who have as it were the best of both worlds and still choose to live abroad. Whatever their inner compulsions, I for one must share with you my own dilemmas, my own peculiar reasons for staying home.
There is a grave tension in the minds of all the parents who have college age children. So total is the collapse of the College system that one wonders at the thick skinned ness of those who do not know or pretend that they do not know of the utter worthless ness of the two years of what laughingly passes for studies in Classes 11 and 12 in our country.
Have you seen the utter baselessness of the curriculum lately? We who know joke about the Prisoner Of Zenda who is crying to be released from the captivity of the Pakistani curriculum!!! It would be funny if wasn’t so sad. Parents are thinking along the following lines: I am not exaggerating here:
Dr. Nadir’s claims are fantastic, as in based on fantasy. I invite Dr. Abdul Nadir to read Ivan Illich’s Medical Nemesis (Bantam, 1977) which is “an attack on the gravest health hazard we face today: the medical system”. In case you think it is a half baked homeopath’s crack at the ineptness of the medical system, consider that the author is one of the leading voices of intelligent criticism on modern issues particularly health and education. The research journals he quotes on his central point of Iatrogenesis (Doctor caused disease) include such journals as Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine and the Harvard Medical Journal. Indeed the reviewer in Lancet writes: “It is a strong case to answer.”
Consider the opening lines of another virulent attack (Confessions of a Medical Heretic) by one of the medical profession’s stars: Dr. Robert Mendelsohnn, chair of the State of Illinois Medical Licensing Authority for 25 years:
“I believe that 90% of the world’s medical paraphernalia (hospitals, pharmacies, drug laboratories etc.,) could disappear from the face of the earth and the impact on human health will be immediate and beneficial.”
Doctor Sahib, certainly go and stay wherever you wish. The world is a global village anyway. This nation will continue to produce your kind and deliver them to serve others. At least spare us your descriptions of the “good life” in the land of peace and prosperity… we who choose to live here are just about equally aware of the streets of gold and silver elsewhere. It might just be possible that we think it is a privilege to serve those who are oppressed, downtrodden and weak. And then again, we might be inspired by models that are just as meaningful to us than the “openness and the freedom” you found so attractive there.
And who knows: one day you may just have to come back to be treated by one of these poor ones, and again who knows, you might just be glad he (she) decided to stay.
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million who will not survive the week.
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 500 million people around the world.
If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8% of the worlds wealthy.
If your parents are still married and alive, you are very rare.
If you hold up your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful, you are blessed because the majority can, but most do not.
If you can hold someone’s hand, hug him or her, or even touch him or her on the shoulder, you are blessed.
If you can read this message, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read anything at all.
And so I conclude with two quotations: one from the poem ‘Here” by R. S. Thomas:
It is too late to start
For destinations not of the heart
I must stay here with my hurt.
And the other one is from the same source with which I began, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount:
Let your light so shine that they may see your good works and give glory to God in heaven
—Jesus Christ: Matthew 5:16