The spirit of Kerala can never be captured by the diseased sermons of few self-serving bigoted men.
Fire and safety personnel try to pull out Noushad and the two labourers stuck in the sewer near Jaya auditorium in Kozhikode. (Photo: DC FILE)
KOZHIKODE: If at all any proof was required that humanity knows no caste or creed, it came on November 26. On that day, Noushad P, a handsome 32-year-old debt-ridden autorickshaw driver in Kozhikode gave his life in an attempt to save two migrant labourers, two men who were absolute strangers to him.
Noushad, a son and a father and a husband like the rest of us, could have been practical, could have merely stood helpless and clamoured for help like the many who had assembled at the accident spot near Jaya auditorium.
But the man, unlike any of us, must have been a human of a higher order, God-like. He must have felt the last painful gasps of two obscure Andhra workers as his own. Noushad, along with the two men he vainly tried to save, died of asphyxiation. Many say he foolishly jumped to death, but it was also a leap into the divine.
Noushad also had more worries than an average man. Hailing from Karuvissheri near Malikkadavu, 10 km from Kozhikode, Noushad was struggling to pay his auto EMI and debts he had accumulated with the marriage of his sister.
He studied up to SSLC and his father Siddique abandoned his mother and sister when he was eight years old. After staying with his father for years, he returned to his mother and sister at the age of 20.
The youth was the sole bread winner of the family and he made the two ends meet by doing mason work, going as a driver in parcel vehicle and doing sundry other jobs.
Two years back, he went to Kuwait as a taxi driver for a family to clear his debts. After coming back, he sold his wife Nafreeza's ornaments and bought an auto rickshaw with a bank loan.
He was steadily recovering financially when the mishap struck. "Helping mentality marks the personality of Noushad. Years ago, he had saved a girl who was taken away by the waves at Kappad beach.
After his death, one of his passengers came to us and said that it was Noushad who returned back his bag containing money which was forgotten in the auto," said Mohammad Shaji, uncle of Noushad.
And it was not as if he was a daredevil. Noushad's fellow auto driver and CITU district committee member T.V Noushad recalls that after the Vengalam-Ramanatukara bypass, which passed near his home, got functional, he had sleepless nights.
"He was scared whenever he was called to some spots along the bypass as the stretch had become notorious for its accidents," his namesake tells us. The Rs 10 lakh that Vellapally Natesan had claimed the Chief Minister had announced for Noushad, however, is yet to reach his family.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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