“Champions of charity”

It was with keen interest and an overlay of emotion that I read the article "Champions of charity” about the Parsis of Hong Kong (Parsiana, August 7, 2011); not because I too am a Parsi, not only because of their overwhelming magnanimity, but because it struck a personal note. My husband and I were direct recipients of their goodness and generosity in the month of May 2010.

It had started out as an annual vacation, this time to Hong Kong, Macau and Lantau Island. The days passed like clockwork, thanks to the efficiency of the Chinese tour managers. However, now and again my husband, Hoshang, would complain of tiredness and a slight fever. We put it down to exhaustion and a touch of the sun, since we were both 64 years of age. A paracetamol tablet and some rest seemed to put him right for the next day’s itinerary.

Meanwhile, we had met up with Farida Mogul, a casual acquaintance from Bombay who took us shopping to Stanley Market, and with Ervad Homyar Nasirabadwala, the priest in residence of the Zoroastrian Anjuman. I even attended a gahanbar at the Zoroastrian Building, my husband having opted out as he said he would rather rest.

The next day I took Hoshang to the Zoroastrian Building where he felt very cold and started shivering. We put it down to the low temperature of the air conditioning. On returning to the hotel, he was in an alarming state. His fever had spiked, there was rash on his body and his pulse was non-existent! I asked the hotel manager if they had an in-house doctor and was told: "No, take him to a hospital.” Can one imagine my state of helplessness? Here I was in a strange land, with a language problem, only one day before we were to fly back home, with most of our money spent, and no family or friends to fall back on.

I phoned Nasirabadwala as we had met only that morning. He arrived, post haste. He telephoned Farida, who called up her husband, Shiraz. They came. Then Farida phoned Dr Cyrus Kumana, a Parsi doctor of repute, describing the symptoms. He advised taking my husband to Ruttonjee Hospital which was the closest to where we were located. Hoshang could barely walk. Farida, with her golden heart, said to me, "You can’t stay here alone in the hotel, you come stay with us.”

We managed to take Hoshang by taxi to the hospital where the doctor examined him. His blood pressure could hardly be recorded. It was 63/39! That he was alive and conscious at all was a miracle. The fee for this preliminary examination was HK $ 500. Without being asked, Shiraz paid up. Before admitting my husband, the Hospital informed us that the charges for a non-citizen would be HK$ 13,900 per day! I had not the faintest idea where the money was going to come from, but my husband’s life had to be saved, so I nodded "OK.”

The following week was harrowing, with visits to the Hospital twice a day from Farida’s house, extending our visas and air tickets and praying intensely. The diagnosis was a relapse of the malaria Hoshang had contracted four months earlier in India. It was then that I was advised to apply to the Zoroastrian Charity Funds of Hong Kong, Canton and Macao for a loan to pay the Hospital bill and possibly for business class air tickets in case I was unable to get economy class at short notice. Nasirabad­wala endorsed our case as being genuine and the trust immediately agreed to pay everything. They didn’t even ask for a file full of "original bills” as other trusts do. I was only asked to find out the exact name in which the Hospital cheque had to be made out. The amount was a staggering HK $ 45,000! The cheque was issued immediately.

The work of my band of angels-in-disguise did not end there. Kumana, well known to the young Chinese doctors who attended on Hoshang, spoke to them and to the doctor at the government health center about the case, and, would you believe it, the entire charge was waived on a technical point. This was another miracle by Ahura Mazda. I returned the cheque.

By now, by government law (they call it "ordinance”), Hoshang had been shifted to an infectious diseases hospital, St. Margaret’s, in far away Kowloon and only after his blood tests showed no malarial parasites was he given the discharge papers. And now comes the icing on the cake. A very gracious lady, Ruby Master, loaned us her Mercedes and chauffeur to drive me with our baggage from Farida’s house in Hong Kong to the hospital in Kowloon to pick up my husband and then to the airport in Lantau Island, a ride which would otherwise have cost around HK $ 500 by taxi. It was an episode to remember. I dread to think of how badly we would have been stranded in any other country in the world, under similar circumstances. God bless the Parsis of Hong Kong! Even as charitable Parsis go, they stand head and shoulders above the rest. They are a breed apart. May their tribe and barkat (prosperity) increase!

VEERA DASTOOR

veeradastoor@yahoo.com