It's 1am in the morning. My dad has just got off the phone to accident and emergency looking distressed. I glance nervously across at him from the other side of the dimly lit room. "They wouldn't even tell me if he was alive - patient confidentiality," he muttered. I nodded, acknowledging my fathers focused efforts on at least trying to do something. By now it had become obvious the incident had affected him deeply, he hadn't slept since he saw it, and it has been replaying in his mind, he tells me, every waking hour. | "It dawns on me how much each human life means. It doesn't matter if that person was Hindu, Christian, atheist or other, he was at his root a human" | | Azam Bata |
The day before, my dad witnessed something that may have changed his life. As he pulled up to some traffic lights he saw a young man, my age and build come flying across from the other side of the road. The boy had been launched 15 feet into the air and landed, head first, beside my Dad's driver side door. My dad heard the sickening crunch of bone and saw the trickle crimson red spread across the pavement. In the evening traffic, everything suddenly seemed to slow down, and the moment became intense and heavy. In the next instance, everything sped up as if someone had hit the fast forward button. My dad began shaking and yelling out. A couple came running up to my dad and forced my dad to move on as he was holding up traffic. In shock, still shaking and beginning to sweat, he recited a silent prayer to himself, then left. The religion of humanity He hasn't stop praying since then. For the first time in his life, he tells me, he realised how mortal we all are, he connected to the suffering of that one human. In that being a part of the incident his mind began racing. He began thinking of how the boys family would be indescribably hurt, how his parents and friends, future children, future wife, how they all suffer with him. As I listen to him, clearly fidgeting and preoccupied, it dawns on me how much each human life means. And how in that situation it didn't matter if that person was Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, atheist or other, he was at his root a human. It is that part we connect to, it is that tragedy we too try to suffer with. He starts to tell me that he needs to find the family, he needs to find out whether the boy is ok, he wants to know if he can do anything to help console them. He sounds very restless.
 | | A family unit |
He truly connects to this other human being and his heart is compelling him to act. It's not religious, its not a sense of responsibility but something more, something basic and innate. A compassion that is the grace of every human soul. That true human connection, that want to share and help in another mans suffering, and that compelling whisper of the heart is what guided my dads hands to dial up the emergency room in the middle of the night and me to sit there, watching him, trying to be there for him. The religion of the heart This is the religion of humanity. Regardless of god or no god, this is the religion of the heart. It is what is making my father see, that every human, every boy or girl, we read about, or watch the news about, getting hurt, is real, and truly suffers. It is what is keeping me up in the small hours of the morning, after my dad has felt relieved of his burden and is sleeping lightly upstairs. It is the religion of the heart that is forcing me to type this out bleary eyed, somewhat dazed, hoping this might touch someone. Any one. Maybe then, if life is seen as fragile, and never taken for granted, there will be less people making less phone calls begging A&E, "Just tell me is he is alive, or not?" | 
