Anecdotes by Kindness Unlimited: In His Darkest Hour, a Stranger Chose Kindness

As we approach World Kindness Day (November 13), The Free Press Journal is launching Kindness Stories, a special series featuring anecdotes of compassion, generosity and selfless acts by ordinary people, facilitated by Kindness Unlimited. Through four columns by different contributors over this month, we hope to highlight how simple gestures can make a profound difference in someone's life. 

The  first story is about a stranger whose extraordinary act of generosity became an enduring inspiration for someone he had never met. Anisha Srinivas was desperately trying to save a friend. A man mourning the loss of his own son became her unlikely answer, inspiring her to make blood donation a regular act of kindness. This story of kindness is narrated by Anisha Srinivas. 

The call came around midnight on November 8. A close friend of Anisha Srinivas had met with a serious accident and was rushed to hospital.

“My entire body went numb for a few minutes,” she recalls. By the time she gathered herself, she was already on her way to the hospital.

Her friend had lost a lot of blood and needed at least three units immediately. His blood group was O negative, one of the rarest blood groups. Only a small fraction of Indians have this blood group, making it extremely difficult to find a compatible donor in such an emergency.

Neither the family members nor their friends had a matching blood group. The hospital's blood bank was also running short of O-negative blood, while all the other blood banks were closed at that hour.

“We were all losing hope,” says Srinivas.

Just then, a stranger overheard their anxious conversation and approached them. He had the same blood group. Without asking questions or waiting to be persuaded, he immediately volunteered to donate blood.

A few hours later, her friend regained consciousness and was on the road to recovery.

When the group went to thank the stranger, they found him beside the body of a 10-year-old boy, crying. His son had died of excessive blood loss following an accident.

The man had donated blood to a stranger on the very night he lost his own child. If this is not kindness, then what is? When they asked him if there was anything they could do for him, his response was quiet and simple: he did not want anyone else to go through what he was going through.

That night became a turning point for Srinivas. She decided to make blood donation a regular practice. For the past two years, she has donated blood every three months. She has also encouraged several others to donate, hoping that every contribution reaches someone in dire need, just as her friend had been.

“When I'm donating, I think of that stranger, who was as rare as his blood group,” she says.

Her story is a reminder that kindness need not always be a grand gesture. Sometimes, it is an instinctive act of compassion, when helping another person takes priority even in the midst of one's own grief.

Note: 

Like Anisha, Kindness Unlimited has come across several such stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things through simple acts of kindness.

Kindness Unlimited is a youth-centric non-profit organisation that has been celebrating 21 years of spreading kindness by advocating it as a life skill. Guided by the motto, ‘Balancing self-interest with the common good’, the organisation works to build empathy, social capital and human connections across communities.

Have you performed or witnessed an act of kindness worth sharing? Write to Kindness Unlimited at contactus@kindnessunlimited.in.