Life - the good, the bad and the ugly.

My Good Samaritan is from India

It was one normally busy day for me, leaving the house at the nick of time to rush to a meeting in town. I jumped into my car and slowly moved out into the main highway traffic. About half a kilometer away, my car coughed and stopped. I started it again and after two meters, it coughed some more and did not anymore start. I was in the middle of a busy road so I got out of the car and opened the hood so that motorists would know that there was a problem with my car and to prevent anyone form unnecessarily blowing off their horns.

I stood at the shoulder of the road and tried to call a friend whose office was nearby. Unfortunately, he was not at the office. I tried to call my office and the person who could have helped me was out of the office. I stood there worrying about what I should do. There were a lot of vehicles who just passed me by. The persons I was supposed to meet with were calling me and I had to explain that I got stuck in the middle of the road and had to appeal for them to wait for me.

I was really hoping that some Good Samaritan will stop and share his gas with me. I waited long until a car stopped. The driver, who I suspect was in his early twenty’s, went out and asked me what was wrong. I told him that I ran out of gas and then he went back to his car and informed his companion who went out of the car. I noticed that he was not a Filipino and he looks like some of the businessmen in the city whom we always refer to as ‘Bombays’. He asked me if I had a container for gas to which I answered in the negative. He then offered to fetch some gas for me.

When they returned with a gallon of gas after some minutes, I asked them how much I owe them and the ‘Bombay’ insisted that I should not pay. I started to chat with him and I learned that he was the Chief Administrative Officer of the International Department of Medicine of St. Louis University. His name is V. Rameshkumar and he is from India. Of course, I was immensely thankful to him and I told him so.

Filipinos normally boast about their hospitality and good values like these are something extraordinary. On that day however, I realized that in my own land where I was supposed to depend on my people, my people passed me by at a time that I needed them – and my Good Samaritan was a foreigner – and a very busy person I suspect, who went out of his way to help a person in need. I realized, after all, that hospitality and good virtues are universal- and the Filipinos are losing it.

Filed under: Uncategorized and tagged Good Samaritan, India, Manja Bayang, Ramesh, SLU College of Medicine