Between two lives

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Between Two Lives

I was nursing a cup of bitter airport coffee at Changi, watching the quiet efficiency of the world pass by—travelers moving with purpose, announcements gliding through the air like practiced apologies—when the man approached me.

He hesitated first. Then, noticing my passport lying open on the table, he asked softly,

“Sir… are you from India?”

There was something in his voice—neither confidence nor desperation, but a cautious hope. I nodded.

“My name is Ramu,” he said, lowering himself into the chair opposite me without waiting for permission. “I don’t know why, but I felt I should speak to you.”

He looked ordinary in every way—thin, sun-darkened skin, cheap sandals, a shirt ironed too many times. The kind of man whose life passes unnoticed unless it collapses entirely.

Only then did I notice the men sitting a little distance away. They weren’t watching us openly, but their eyes returned to Ramu often enough. Guards—not uniformed, but unmistakable.

Ramu followed my gaze and gave a faint smile.

“They are with me,” he said. “Or maybe I am with them.”

After a pause, words spilled out—not dramatically, but like water escaping a cracked pot.

He was poor. From Bihar. His wife worked as a maid in Patna, leaving home before sunrise, returning after dark. Two children—one in school, one too young to understand why milk had become occasional instead of daily. Debt sat on his chest like a stone.

Then came the proposal.

Eighty lakhs.

All travel paid. Hospital expenses covered. A small shop promised once he returned. Enough, he said, to turn survival into dignity.

“I am selling my kidney,” he said plainly, as if stating a train schedule.

The recipient—a wealthy man from another country—was traveling with him. Life and death, sitting side by side in business class, divided by money and biology. The surgery would happen somewhere in Southeast Asia, where questions were fewer and paperwork lighter.

“In India,” Ramu said, “they ask too many questions. Relative, blood group, family consent. Here… they only ask for payment.”

I knew this. We all do. I had seen cases where relatives donated kidneys, acts of quiet heroism that never reached newspapers. I had also read about darker stories—men kidnapped, drugged, waking up with scars and silence.

This, at least, was consent. Compelled consent—but consent all the same.

During the long layover, while the others slept stretched across airport chairs, Ramu slipped away. Fear had finally reached him.

“What if I don’t wake up?” he whispered.

“What if my children grow up without a father?”

His ticket and passport were not with him. They were “kept safe” by the party arranging everything. Safe—from escape.

“I need the money,” he said. “But I am afraid, sir. You are educated. You have seen the world. Tell me—what should I do?”

That question landed on me like a burden I had no right to carry.

What advice could I give?

To walk away would mean returning to debt, hunger, humiliation.

To go ahead meant gambling with his body so others could keep theirs intact.

I told him gently what I knew—that one kidney can sustain a life, that many live normally after donation. I also told him the truth—that risk never asks permission, and exploitation rarely wears a villain’s face.

He listened quietly.

“I don’t blame them,” he said suddenly, surprising me.

“The man who needs my kidney… he is also fighting death. For him, this is the only way. For me, this is also the only way.”

Life, it seemed, had created a marketplace where desperation met desperation, only the currency was flesh.

The guards eventually noticed his absence. They came. There was no violence, no shouting. Just firm hands, practiced smiles, inevitability.

Before leaving, Ramu turned once more.

“If my children can study,” he said, “if my wife doesn’t have to scrub other people’s floors forever… then maybe this kidney will have lived a better life in another body.”

He was taken away.

I finished my coffee long after it had gone cold.

At an airport where millions pass each day chasing comfort, ambition, or escape, two lives had intersected briefly—one buying time, the other selling a part of himself to purchase hope.

We often speak of the sanctity of the human body. But poverty, I realized, has a way of rewriting moral codes. When survival is at stake, ethics become negotiable, and the line between victim and participant blurs.

Perhaps the real tragedy is not that kidneys are sold—but that a world exists where a man must sell a piece of himself so his family can remain whole.

And somewhere between law and compassion, between life saved and life risked, the question remains unanswered:

Is this commerce—or sacrifice?