Mercy Killing, Ethics Or Economics Poem by Aniruddha Pathak

Silent my heart goes to souls long in strife,
To those in ailing beds, to drooping chins,
Linked to lifeless wires breathing borrowed life—
All that try, be God from mere mute machines!

Life in coma may or not human feel,
But those in care seem humble pie to pick,
Oh worst ever to feel more than the sick,
Sick do suffer; those in care no less still.

Poor patients know not they're a living corn,
In dead beds to nameless numbers they turn
In treatment shops whose mission is to earn,
The loved ones not in tune with goings on!

And hospitals do have what's one way lanes—
Intensive care a black-hole all so mean,
Under care of an unfeeling machine,
The concerned only priming through glass panes!

Nurses come and go taking copious notes,
Whilst machines keep beating robotic beat,
Pump in blood, but no life as human treat,
Doctors debate and give quotable quotes.

Intensive care's now going extensive,
Expensive besides as measured by bills,
While pockets pinch wounded go weary wills,
What price is life? None knows till its last heave.

To fate does rest when medical mercy,
On chance, not choice the game may end one day,
Machines are when switched off, life left to pray,
Patient impatient to end agony!

Yet, mercy killing no bird of ethics,
It sings elegies on economics!
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This is one more in the series on Euthanasia. The way mercy killing has to be undertaken, it has become a contradiction in terms. Very little mercy remains there. It may sound ethical for others, but for the close ones it boils down to sheer economics, hardly a legal subject!
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Musings | 02.04.11 |