This happened a few years ago, when as the chairman of my colony, the doorbell rang, and a watchman stood outside my door. It was two in the morning. “Drunk girl on one of the building’s staircases, sir!” he said.

I called out to my daughter to come with me. We walked to a building, quite far from mine and near the gate.

She was sprawled on the first-floor landing. My daughter went to her and slowly shook her, “Come, get up,” she whispered, “We’ll help you up the stairs!” The girl moaned and brought out on the floor.

I rang the doorbells of the two residents on the floor. One was a mother of a girl who had just got married, I was sure her motherly feelings would come to our help, I thought. “Take her away from here!” shouted her husband, “We don’t want such filth here! Call the police!”

“Call the police for a small slip up of having one too many?” I asked, flabbergasted.

The other resident looked through the grill, and didn’t bother opening the door.

With great difficulty we lifted her up and with my daughter pushing and me half carrying her we lumbered up the stairs watched through the half-closed door by the resident who was still peeping through the grill.

I opened the girl’s door with a key I found in her purse, cleaned out a chair and placed her on it, in such a position that she wouldn’t gag if she puked again..

We closed the door and moved out. The next day she called, “I am so embarrassed,” she said, “I am so sorry! It has never happened to me before!”

I chuckled on the phone and said, “It happens to the best of us!”

Yes it happens to the best of us; we think we are beyond mistakes, and we make a terrible one. We think we can do no wrong and we do something terribly wrong. From what I gathered somebody at the party had deliberately mixed her drinks and she had passed out, but to her neighbours she was a cheap girl.

It is so easy to pass judgement on someone else, isn’t it?

As I think back on the episode I wonder what made me lift her up and take her to her room, what made my daughter also gently help? “Dad,” she said later, “It could have been me in that same situation!”

Yes, it could have been me too. It could be you, and when we see somebody fall, whether on the staircase or in life itself, we need to help, because it could very well be us the next time.

My thoughts go to the parable of the Good Samaritan: Why did the man stop and help? Did he see himself lying on the road? Are those the ‘neighbours’ we are supposed to look for and help? Are we like those neighbours on the staircase, passing judgement? Somewhere up in heaven, I feel God smiling, not at me, but at the drunk girl..!

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