RED UNDER THE SKIN, BLOOD DONATION WEEK 2020

Second in essay competition organized by BPKIHS Students’ Blood Donation Committee BPKIHS Dharan on the occasion of Blood Donation Week 2020

Rosy Shah

Nepalganj Medical College

What is it that keeps us alive? Our frail hearts dancing relentlessly to the lub dup music which resonates to our deepest crevices through rivulets under our skin in which flows the warmth of red elixir, life itself! The red which flows through our consciousness even, propagating with it our thoughts and emotions, reasons and understanding; imbibing from the skin the rawness of the world and feeding them to our conscience to build our perceptions.

The red under our skin that can flow into another of our kind, carrying with it the same promise of life. This red that permeates our souls is what makes us conscious beings and the ability to let it flow into another as easily as we let our thoughts flow into the universe is what makes us Human beings.

Should and when the red under our skin flood its banks and begin to pour out, we seek desperately to find another whose red is the same hue as ours, lest life should escape us completely. The red we seek of hue the same may not flow under a skin of colour the same as ours, may not have run in a tongue that emulates the same song as ours, may not have insinuated into a mind whose thoughts and principles are the same as ours.

And yet we know that the red under their skin will flow just the same under ours, flushing our pale faces with a rosy radiance as our dry riverbeds once again spring with new life as our hearts keep dancing to let their red flow with our own, invigorating our fading consciousness with a promise of more thoughts and memories.

The sachets of this red magic potion don’t advertise the person’s place in the established social hierarchy, the color of his skin, the part of the world he calls home, the work he does for a living or the gods he worships.

It doesn’t so much as advertise the name of the magnanimous benefactor. No, the sachets only tell us if the red is the same hue we seek, if it will flow without rejection in our deep crevices, if it can salvage the air in our dying air pockets; this red we seek promises us that we’re more alike than every other way we believe we are different.

Why cannot we shed our worldly prejudices and accept a person as an equal just as easily as we accept the red under his skin? Why cannot we fight alongside them in their battles for equality, justice and honour as fiercely as their red fights alongside ours to defeat a dire fate? When not a single cell in our body would reject their red, why do we continue to renounce them, to abandon them and to refuse them of basic humanity?

If God meant for our red to be purer, to be more regal, to be different, wouldn’t our hearts stop dancing, forbidding their red to mix with our own? Wouldn’t our thoughts become polluted from being bathed in their dirty red? Wouldn’t the red of a person, mere touch of whose makes water undrinkable to us, run in our veins to poison our chastity?

On the surface our skin may differ, but buried in our depths, our hearts dance in sync to the same music to let the same red flow into our souls. The creator of this vast universe made each of us unique and beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, he changed nothing. On the inside he made us all red and regal. We are all the same as the red under our skin. We are only as virtuous as we allow our red to flow into another; only as rich as the lives we salvage.

Here is First in essay competition Organized by BPKIHS Students’ Blood Donation Committee on Occasion of Blood Donation Week 2020