I am reinforcing my sadness and horror at the callous nature of a young man’s death, which was carried in thewhy.com and deserves to reach every one of you. His parents opened a page and received 22,000 reactions. All rage. Is this who we are as Indians you read it and tell me?

You have got a friend. You just call out my name and I’ll come running. He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.

All these lyrics are fine but why are we cowards about reaching out and getting involved. Here is an amazingly touching and rage-inducing story about the death of a young man that occurred because nobody helped. They could have saved his life from where they kept standing five feet away but they didn’t do anything. And you know what, maybe you and I would also not have done anything…not because we are bad people but because we don’t want to get involved. The system scares us and that is the tragedy. But for the family that lost a son on March 20, 2014, the grief will not dry up.

Their son, Dhaval Lodaya, had just completed his Class-XII examinations and was on a train with his friends en route to pray at a temple near Mumbai. The last bogeys of the train suddenly got derailed. The boys were standing in the passageway and were flung out of the train by the impact. Dhaval was lying on the track, bleeding from his head. He was alive. There were 100 odd people milling about. Did they come to the rescue? No. Did they try to do something to help the little boy? No.

You know what these ghoulish people did? They took videos on their mobile phones and sent it to their friends. Not one person came to the rescue. Not one. After the amateur movie show ended, one man called the police station and got the wrong station. They then called the Ambivali station and were told to ring Titwala station. The 108 helpline failed to respond. The local big shot of the village where the accident occurred said he could not transport Dhaval to hospital because he did not have a car. The kids begged someone to help their friend. No body came forward.

Then the cops came and got busy barricading the area but would not touch the kid. Advice: Wait for the ambulance. At this stage the little boy was alive. One hour later the ambulance arrived but could not take Dhaval to the hospital because the staff on board were giving first aid to other passengers injured in the accident. The panicked friends then pulled the stretcher from the crew and went to lift their friend. Guess what. No one came forward. Nobody moved a bloody inch. Then a lady shouted that someone should help the children carry the stretcher.

Dhaval reached the hospital two hours after the accident, one hour and 15 minutes after the police arrived. This is not a Disaster Management System. This is a disaster. Ask yourselves, what price our “togetherness” when we are so craven and so useless to a 12-year-old boy lying on a train track bleeding to death while we focused on his pain and sent it to friends; share status. Sick.

Which one of us or the ambulance crew, or those 100 movie takers or the cops look this family in the eye and say sorry. Damn right we are sorry. What a sorry state. Think of it. It could have been us. On the side of a road, in a shopping mall or at the airport. With none to do us any reverence. Walk away, we spend our lives walking away.