A pitiful passerby

Image by krakow.bicycles via Flickr

The point made here is very right: have we been so much preoccupied with our own affairs that everything and everybody else is a blurred view? We may be looking at the mirror now, and all we see is our own self…

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05:55 AM Jun 16, 2009

Edric Sng, edric@mediacorp.com.sg

ON THE walk home from the MRT station on Saturday, I saw a man lying face down in the grass by the roadside, barely moving, legs and arms awkwardly splayed, a bicycle in a heap beside him. Bending over him was another man, seemingly a stranger, nudging him and urgently asking him if he was all right, but getting no response. I sprinted over.

The fallen man - we guessed he was a foreign labourer - was a mess. Face covered in blood, thickly flowing from his nose, which was likely broken. Grass and dried mud all over his face, hair, and clothes. His eyes were glassy, faraway.

We were at the foot of a fairly high hill and we figured that he’d probably sped down too quickly on his bicycle, whose brakes had failed him, sending him headfirst into the concrete.

He wouldn’t respond at first when asked if he needed a doctor or an ambulance. Then he started spouting gibberish, asking where his sister was. After about five minutes, he groggily stood up, but his legs gave way and he damn near fell into a drain. We forced him to sit down again.

At this point, a Singaporean woman who looked in her mid-20s came over, glanced at the man lying on the pavement, then tapped me on the shoulder. She, too, looked worried.

“Excuse me, do you know where Jalan Masjid is?”

I don’t know, I wanted to say, ask the bloodied man lying on the floor. I bit my tongue and pointed her the right way. She walked off without so much as a glance at our fallen acquaintance.

Eventually, we managed to bundle the poor man and his mangled bicycle off into a passing cab - he absolutely refused to allow us to take him to a clinic or hospital - and between us gave him $20 to get him home.

I don’t know what was at Jalan Masjid, but I sure hope it was a matter of life or death. Singaporeans, eh?

From TODAY, Voices; see the source article here.