Shalimar Hospital campaign: Learning the hard way
It is harrowing, utterly upsetting, brutally realistic, and frighteningly factual. The public awareness campaign by Shalimar Hospital sponsored by Babar Ali Foundation is too intense to be watched yet too important to ignore.
Tea burns are one of the most common accidents people face every day but we usually don’t realize that a large majority of those victims are innocent children. Shalimar Hospital has taken an important step towards creating awareness regarding handling hot beverages in the company of children. The campaign is based on facts and narrates the stories of actual victims.
The most disturbing thing about the whole affair is that all these unfortunate incidents are the mere outcomes of pure negligence. Every other day people ignore the possibility of running into danger by saying ‘Kuch nahe hota’ (nothing will happen). Most accidents happen because of the ignorance of the fact that nothing happens until it happens and by then it is too late.
Shalimar Hospital has highlighted a problem, but what’s the remedy. Creating awareness is one thing and knowing the solution is entirely another. Is there a solution? Nobody in his/her right mind would ever spill a hot beverage or tea on a child intentionally. Never. How can we fix the problem of habitual carelessness and criminal neglect? Does the answer lie in self-awareness or learning?
The most basic and even most primitive form of learning is learning through experience. Man acquired knowledge on the scale of good and bad experiences. Take the example of fire which is mostly used as a symbol of learning itself. The knowledge of fire was gained by experiencing it, the way it burns the flesh, and consumes everything that comes in its way.
Today we know things that we take for granted to the extent of ignoring it. Everybody knows that a hot tea if spilled will certainly burn. We don’t have to go through the experience of pain and shock that comes as a result of a burn to know that it is like to get burnt to be cautious. All we have to do is to be conscious of our actions, every little thing we do even the minutest movements. We have to stop living in a rush as if life has no meaning except running through time mechanically and creating all sorts of accidents along the way.
Every moment of life is precious and it only comes back to haunt us if spent in a reckless way. No matter what we are and what we do, we should value every moment we live and leave nothing to chance or divine intervention, only then we would be able to evade the terrible eventuality of burning our own child. Shalimar Hospital deserves appreciation for taking up this important issue and making all of us mindful of the fact that our smallest mistakes could cost irreparable damage to someone near and dear to us.
