About thirty cots had been placed in the college assembly hall. It was the blood donation programme. Students were laying down on them while young doctors, in fact medical college students, were examining them, measuring their blood pressure, and getting them ready for the act. We had prepared the event previously, had explained to the students the need for blood donation, had removed the fear of losing blood and the old prejudice about mixing caste when mixing blood, had arranged for a blood donation day in our college, and as a result a number of students together with some professors had volunteered and were now awaiting with some nervousness the momentous occasion.
I too was among them lying on a cot. Out of conviction, and conscious of my official position to give good example. By my side was Dr. Vishnubhai Mawlankar, the Red Cross director in the city and an old friend, working now on me. I rolled up my left shirt sleeve, he tied a rubber band up on my arm, chose a vein, punctured it neatly, and I could see the bottle standing on the side slowly becoming red with my blood. A deep, steady, thick red. It was my first blood donation.
Dr. Mawlankar sensed my tenseness and relaxed me with his talk. 'We need blood in our hospitals for victims of accidents. A fall, a crush, a pedestrian run over by a car, a deep random cut with blood loss, and we have to replace it with speed for the person to live. We use it in childbirth. Nature has made wonderful arrangements for birth, but sometimes a young mother loses blood heavily and needs immediate supply to stay alive and to be able to nurse her child happily into a new life. We need it when we operate cases where blood losses are unavoidable and we are ready to inject new blood into the patient. And then, sad though it is but also real at times, if there is war in our frontiers and our valiant soldiers are wounded, we must be ready with our supplies to save lives on the battlefront. In all those cases a bottle like this – he nodded towards the bottle that was getting filled with my blood – can mark the difference between life and death.'
*
I followed his eyes towards the bottle. My blood. My life. My gift. I breathed gently, regularly, as the doctor had advised me. Everything was so simple, and yet there seemed to be some solemnity about it, some depth, some mystery. I was getting lost in my thoughts when the doctor, always on the alert, spoke again.
'See the wonder of it. Who will receive this blood? You will never know. And he or she shall never know who gave it to them. So that you don't feel proud before anybody, and nobody feels obliged to you for your donation. Clean gift. You help without pride and they receive without dependence. You save a body and you save a self-respect. You give without expecting thanks, and they receive without owing you a debt. This is the ideal gift. Giving without hurting. Doing a favour without feeling superior. Helping without being self-conscious about it. Anonymous generosity. I will thank you, of course, in their name, but I don't know who they are. This is the beauty of blood donation.'
*
'And then something else', the good doctor went on. 'You are a Christian. In all likelihood your blood here will go to a Hindu or a Muslim. Just as a Hindu's blood can go to a Muslim, and a Muslim's blood to a Hindu. Do you realise the significance of it? We doctors do classify blood according to certain groups which we have to keep in mind for medical reasons, but that has nothing to do with caste or creed, with place of birth or colour of skin, or even with being a man or a woman. Human blood is human blood, whether the person in question be rich or poor. See all your students around here. You know them and you know who is a Hindu and who is a Muslim, who is a Brahmin and who is a Dalit. And the blood is the same. Do you remember when both of us, you as a teacher and I as a doctor, went on a blood donation campaign to explain and propagate the idea of blood donation among college students?'
Here it was my turn to speak. 'Yes I remember' I said. 'Particularly our talk in that Jain boarding in the city where we met many bright students and strong opposition. Their sense of collective identity was very strong, and mixing blood with other communities was initially unacceptable to them. I did my best to explain that blood was universal and had nothing to do with religion, but then you clenched the issue with an answer I have never forgotten. May I remind you of it? A tall student stood up and asked you with a touch of insolence in his voice: "And how many times have you given blood in your life, sir?" You answered quietly, "Forty-four." The student insisted defiantly, "How are you so sure of the number?" And you explained unruffled: "I've mentioned to you that after one has given blood, the body replaces the lost blood in just three months. That means one can donate blood once every three months. Since I was named director of the Red Cross I made it my habit to donate blood every three months, that is four times a year. Since I have been director of the Red Cross for eleven years that makes it four by eleven, or forty-four." That simple testimony of yours had a greater effect on the whole audience that all the arguments I presented.'
'That's the beauty of it', he went on. 'You give something but you lose nothing. When you give out any other thing, you lose whatever it is you have given, but here the body by itself replaces the loss and you find yourself in a short time as rich as you were. You give without conceit, you give for the unity of humankind, and you give without losing anything in the giving. No transaction like that, to be sure.'
*
At that moment one of the medical students who were conducting the blood donation came rushing to Dr. Mawlankar, who was still sitting by my side, and said in a state of great agitation, 'Please, please, sir, come at once, sir, come with me!' Dr. Mawlankar, without looking up, answered with self-possessed gravity, 'May I know, my young man, what is the matter on your mind?' The student blurted out incoherently, 'That girl over there, sir, that girl on that cot, the one I am attending to…'. – 'Yes, young man, what is wrong with that girl?' The boy exclaimed, 'She has blood pressure zero, sir! Please come at once. Blood pressure zero!' Dr. Mawlankar, without losing his cool and without getting up from his chair, looked up at the student and asked him with deliberate slowness, 'Is the patient alive?' – 'Yes, sir, yes. She is alive. The girl is alive still. She is alive.' – 'Then check your instrument, my boy, it must be faulty.' – 'Yes sir, thank you, sir, I will check my instrument, sir, thank you, sir', muttered the boy while retreating all confused, and the good doctor and experienced teacher smiled at me indulgently saying, 'Those boys, those boys…'. I think I shall never forget the girl with zero blood pressure. Quite a record.
*
That was my first blood donation. I got up after a brief rest and looked around at the students lying on their cots. I knew them by their names, their faces, their performance in class and in exams, their personal problems with some of them, and a genuine affection for all. Now a touch of tenderness was added at seeing them, not as my mathematics students but as compassionate persons, as human beings, as boys and girls concerned for their neighbour, not wielding pen and paper to tackle mathematical problems but lying down with rolled up sleeves and sticking needles to give of their blood. I blessed them all gently in my heart as I looked at them. At each of them in turn. It was a hallowed sight.
I joined the students that were leaving the hall after giving blood. Outside we were given each a cup of tea, courtesy of the Red Cross. I took it gratefully, smiling at the exchange. We gave blood and they give us tea. And then a certificate of our donation. Now back to the classroom. But with a new spirit, a new link between us, a new respect and kinship with my students and fellow teachers. We had given blood together. We were all one family.
