A pile of water bottle packs, growing taller by the hour, serves as the unofficial boundary where the protesters’ territory begins. Young medical students are staging a sit-in on a section of the service road outside West Bengal’s health department in Salt Lake City, demanding justice in the rape-murder of a doctor on duty at the R.G. Kar Hospital and defying a Supreme Court directive to get back to work.
Each time someone picks up a pack to distribute the bottles among those shouting slogans, another pack materialises as if by magic, brought by common people walking in to lend support. It’s not just water they bring; many are coming with food (one man has brought home-cooked meals for 200 people), while Techno India, which has its campus right across the road, is allowing the protesters, stationed in Salt Lake City since Tuesday (September 10, 2024), to use its washrooms.
What it means that everything that the young doctors need to stay put at the venue is being provided by people who are complete strangers to them — the common citizens of Kolkata. The only thing that connects the two is the demand for justice in the R.G. Kar Hospital case.
“The young doctor who died was like my daughter. These young people who are protesting here are like my children. How can I not come here? I am a housewife, I do not belong to any political party, I only want justice,” Soma Paul, a resident of Salt Lake City, who came with two of her friends, Debika Chakraborty and Ritu Ghosh, said. The three came with water bottles, hand sanitiser, and garbage bags.
Joy Ghosh, a medical representative, came carrying dozens of ORS tetra packs in his arms, clarifying quickly when asked about his profession, “These are not sample pieces, I bought these with my money. This is my way of supporting them.” Even while he was wondering where to place the tetra packs, another good Samaritan, Nivedita Chakraborty, an IT professional, went about distributing chips and soft drinks and bananas.
By lunchtime, there was so much food that the slogan-shouting had to be paused periodically for announcements to be made that everybody should eat without much delay because a lot of the food was perishable. Many of the protesters ate, and suddenly hand wipes materialised. And just as the afternoon got hotter, yet another good Samaritan walked in with dozens of hand fans.
Published - September 11, 2024 07:00 pm IST
