I was watching a demonstration on T.V. being held by the people from North Eastern India. They were demanding equal treatment from their Northern counterparts. To be treated equally, humanely and with dignity. Not like, “Ye Bahadur kahan se aa gaya or ye Chinki…..� This shows our level of intolerance. We can’t digest little differences in facial features and ascent. All of us have to conform to the herd (Read it hip and happening flock).
But everyone is not like us. I was reading about people of Geel, Belgium. I read one conversation between a husband and wife about this town,
“I just saw something very strange,� he (husband) said before I (wife) could speak. “A woman walking along with her hand to her ear, talking a mile a minute.�
“John, every other person here is talking on a cell phone!�
“She didn’t have a cell phone. She was talking into a black sandal. No one else even glanced her way.�
People behaving in strange manner on road, malls and in homes are ignored affectionately.
For many centuries, this town is caring for the mentally challenged persons. Even Nazis couldn’t break the community resolve to accept the mentally challenged as one of their own! The Nazis left the mentally ill in Geel untouched, unharmed and in peace, elsewhere they were not so lucky but executed along with Jews.
The family foster care for mentally challenged in this small town of Belgium started with the legend of a princess, who refused to marry her own father. The father got senile after the death of his beloved wife and wanted the look-alike daughter to take her place. The daughter fled to Geel. But ultimately she was caught and executed by soldiers, her father had sent. She was considered as the patron saint of the mentally ill. For centuries, they visited her shrine to seek her blessings. The villagers of Geel took in one or a few mentally ill people as a foster family indefinitely. The tradition still continues.
Mentally ill persons, who face rejection as a norm, indifference and callous attitude of society as their fate, find acceptance here. A normal home and where their being “special� doesn’t draw extra attention.
Do we really believe (forget about practicing) that God is everywhere? By respecting human beings we are honoring God Himself? I think we only recite or read Geeta from our throats not from our hearts. That’s why we see the lack of practical manifestations of its good teachings in almost every walk of life.
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