Woofer’s faint but excited barks warned of intruders into my extensive plantation. Since two sides were protected by electrified fences, the intruders must be attempting to cross the fast-flowing creek which delineates my property at the farther end. At my urgent request, representatives of the Emergency Services Unit were able to save from drowning 2 persons.
Apart from their clothing, they had nothing on them. They claimed to be escapees from a distant plantation where they had been brutalised. Any injuries incurred not being visible, the trauma they claimed had to be psychological.
For my protection, and since it was now night, I locked them in a distant corner of the plantation, which provided comfortable lodging, food and other necessary facilities. Did the escapees know about this facility for my workers? Is this why they had sought to enter my plantation? The Protective Services Unit would be called in the morning.
At the crack of dawn, there appeared instead a delegation of 3 from the Succour Seeker Supporters. They criticised my action. As escapees from brutality, the 2 escapees had a right not to be locked up, they declared fiercely; these desperate people had a right to be housed and fed in a humane fashion within my house with the back door left open at all times, until the authorities decided their future. All this was a requirement laid down on a tablet which had come down to them from on-high during pre-history.
The lawyer in the group said that he would take me to court for not allowing free movement to the escapees within my home and property, and for displaying inadequate care. The politician explained that the convention required me to provide succour, no matter what financial costs and family disruption resulted. The third member said that it was the Christian thing to do, especially as there only 2 to look after.
When I asked how these succour seekers would live, after they had left my property, and until they learned that freedom equalled responsibility to house and feed themselves, the joint response from the Supporters was ‘Its God’s Will.’ In the meantime, while we awaited God’s guidance to the heathens (for that is what the escapees are), our courts would require me to house and feed them to a standard they had aspired to after watching our t.v. – thanks to CNN and Al Jazeera. So mought it be!
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 