A teacher asked her students: “Why do people, have different blood groups?” The wittiest among them retorted: “So that mosquitoes may enjoy different flavours.” While mosquitoes presumably relish myriad menus of bloods, blood donors vivify and unify humankind. Today is World Blood Donor Day with the theme: “Blood connects us all, share life, give blood!” Although every one of us has blood coursing through our bodies, the sight of blood is unwelcome. For the ancients, the bright red of blood together with its mystical connection with life and death made it an ominous symbol of violence and wrong, guilt and impending punishment. Only in the light of sacrifice did blood portend good news.
Blood generally symbolises life. Additionally, in the Bible, blood signifies death since it is being spilled results in doom. The shedding of human blood is treated as a capital offence: “Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed.” Blood being symbolic of guilt stems from blood spilt due to murder. Shakespeare’s Macbeth’s oft-quoted query: “Will all Great Neptune’s ocean wash the blood clean from my hand?” echoes the desperation of “men of blood” whose hands are “soaked with blood” and whose sins will not go unpunished.
In the religious realm, discharges of blood are often seen as signs of impurity that fragment the fabric of life. Sadly, menstruating women are sometimes kept away from the sanctum sanctorum and prohibited from partaking in certain rituals. The life of Christ is often interpreted in terms of bloody sacrifice. Jesus does away with animal s acrifice in order “to offer up our bodies as pure sacrifices.”
Predicting his bloody death on the cross, he symbolises it with the proffering of a cup to his disciples, saying, “This is my blood, poured out for you.” Beyond religious significances, despite our imagined ideas of purity and impurity, our manmade divisions of class and caste, when we desperately need blood, don’t we rush to receive it without bothering about “who” the donor is? Irrespective of our backgrounds, blood donors cooperate with God to sustain life; for, science has been unable to produce blood in laboratories thus far.
Medicos say that if one per cent of any population donates blood, the needs of entire countries will be met. Why not be part of that one per cent? My experiences of donating blood — and nudging others to do so — have been heartwarming. Years ago, my students formed a fraternity of donors felicitously named “blood brothers”. Tongue-in-cheek, someone said: “Pessimists have ‘B-negative’ blood group.” Whatever be your blood group, blood connects us all. God-given life flows through our arteries and veins. Show your love. Donate blood. Your little red rivulets will never flow in vain.
