Banana Cake and Total Pain: What London Taught Me About Being Human – Saif Mohammed

Reflections on communication, compassion, and quiet care from Kerala to the UK

One Afternoon in Walthamstow

One afternoon in Walthamstow, where I was staying with a friend, I stepped into a small local supermarket and greeted the shopkeeper. His name was Fawad. Within minutes, we were deep in conversation—he was from a country not too far from mine, one shaped by decades of conflict and resilience. Fawad spoke of home, of how much it had changed. He told me that crime had decreased so much that vendors could now leave carts unattended at night. “You’ll find them intact the next morning,” he said, with quiet pride.

But then he also spoke of the difficult changes—how young girls were no longer allowed to go to school, how daily life had narrowed under increasing restrictions. We spoke openly, warmly, human to human.

Later, when I shared this encounter with some local friends, they gently warned me: “That’s not how things work here. The UK is a very private place. You can’t talk to strangers like that—it’s not appropriate.”

I was taken aback. Was I wrong to engage in that kind of human exchange? Is openness now considered intrusive?

A Banana Cake and a Gentle Rebuttal

The very next morning, however, something beautiful happened. My friend’s British neighbour—a kind, white gentleman—knocked on the door with a warm banana cake his wife had just baked. Not only did he bring the cake, but he stayed for conversation. We talked about everything and nothing, and it felt natural. I thought: so maybe it’s not about “Britishness” or “Indianness.”

Maybe kindness has no national etiquette. Maybe compassion, like conversation, only needs a crack of openness to flow.

Brighton: Two Floors, Two Burdens, No Words

Later in Brighton, I stayed with another friend—a volunteer mediator with the local council. That week, she had attended a conflict resolution meeting between two neighbours living in council flats—one upstairs, one downstairs.

Upstairs lived a woman caring full-time for her ailing, bedridden mother. Below lived a mother of an autistic child who often screamed and cried loudly. The noise disturbed the woman upstairs so much that police and social services had been called multiple times.

At the meeting, my friend said, “All I did was listen.” She let both women speak. She heard their exhaustion, their pain, their fears. “There were tears,” she told me, “but something shifted.” What struck me was this: these women lived mere meters apart. Both were caregivers. Both overwhelmed. But they had never spoken to each other. Not once. Imagine if, instead of escalating the problem, they had shared a conversation. A cup of tea. A tear. A word of understanding.

 

Compassion Beyond Clinical Care

These moments made me reflect again on why I came to London in the first place. I had spoken at St. Christopher’s about “total pain”—a concept that embraces not only physical discomfort, but also the emotional, social, and spiritual layers of suffering.

In Kerala, we’ve adapted this model to be community-led and culturally sensitive. But what I realise now is that total pain isn’t confined to those who are dying. It’s everywhere.

In the woman exhausted from caregiving.

In the mother unable to silence her child’s distress.

In the man who is miles away from home, carrying a quiet nostalgia for the country he left behind.

In those who want to speak but don’t know how, and in those who are afraid to listen.

 

The Risk of Losing Our Ears

We live in a world where individualism is often celebrated, and privacy—while deeply important—can sometimes become a barrier rather than a boundary.

Of course, solitude is not always a sorrow; for some, being alone is a choice, even a sanctuary. Loneliness, after all, is deeply personal—what feels isolating to one may feel restful to another.

But I worry that if compassion is only taught in clinical settings—or only associated with the end of life—we risk losing it where it’s needed most: in the ordinary rhythms of daily living.

If we don’t teach children how to listen, how to hold another’s feelings, how to sit with discomfort, we may raise a generation that knows how to function, but not how to feel.

We are, at our core, social creatures—not just designed to survive, but to coexist. And coexistence requires more than presence. It demands that we notice each other’s pain.

A Closing Reflection

What started as a professional trip became, for me, a series of deeply personal lessons.

I came to London to speak about systems of care, about palliative models. But what I carry back is something simpler: a conversation with a shopkeeper, a slice of banana cake, the silence between two struggling neighbours.

These are not extraordinary moments. But perhaps compassion never is. It’s not about grand gestures. It’s about holding space—for stories, for sorrows, for each other.

That, too, is palliative care. And that, I believe, is the care the world most needs right now.

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Author

Saif Mohammed, 

Consultant, World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre, https://instituteofpalliativemedicine.org

Membership Secretary, Public Health Palliative Care International PHPCIPHPCIhttps://www.phpci.org

Former state program manager, Govt Palliative Care Program, Kerala

Former CEO, Mission Better Tomorrow 

saifsabil@gmail.com