Earlier this week, Parsi Times was contacted by a Good Samaritan, who conveyed to us about his being informed of an elderly, 87-year-old Parsi gentleman, who was living all by himself in abysmal conditions and had taken very ill. So, he went over to the house of the old man to check up on him and was shocked to see him sleeping limply, on a mattress on the floor. He informed us that the old man did not have even basic facilities such as a bed, gas, refrigerator, television, kitchen platform, dining place, facility of drinking water or hot water in his house.

Anticipating that this could be a case of the Novel Coronavirus or Covid-19, the Good Samaritan had a test conducted, which established that the elderly person was indeed suffering from the dreaded virus.

Upon the results of the COVID test being positive, he connected with the BMC a number of times through the day, but was ultimately informed that government hospital  beds were not available and since the patient was 87 years, they could not do much. A telephone call to a former municipal councillor also did not yield any positive result.

After much effort, ultimately, the Good Samaritan had the elderly gentleman admitted to Parsee General Hospital, as a free patient. Kudos to the Good Samaritan for all that he has selflessly done for the patient! A true Parsi indeed!

Having been part of this journey, Parsi Times is of the knowledge that there are quite a few elders and seniors in our community who continue to live in such in appalling conditions of impoverishment and we wish to make a difference through our initiative – ‘Parsi Times LIFELINE’.

Parsi Times looks to collecting data about such individuals living in unfortunate conditions. This data will then be shared with our generous community Trusts which undertake alleviating poverty amongst community members.

Parsi Times requests our readers to share details of elderly Zoroastrians living in impoverished conditions, to enable us to gather and share the information with our Trusts, so that we could help provide our seniors a life of dignity and quality, in their twilight years.