On a Jaipur highway on Friday, a truck hit a tanker carrying gas. The resulting explosion killed several people. Only days before, a Navy speedboat crashed into a tourist ferry in Bombay's harbour. That killed several people too. Some days before that, the driver of one of Bombay's electric buses lost control and it ploughed at high speed into cars and pedestrians. That killed several people as well. Only months before, an enormous billboard in the suburb of Ghatkopar fell over during a spell of fierce wind. You guessed it, that killed several people too.

At some point, perhaps, we get inured to news like this. These are the things, maybe we think, that happen in densely-populated cities. Maybe that's true, I don't know. But what I cannot get inured to, though we see it more and more often, is what happened after that explosion in Jaipur.

The flames severely burned a man, Radheyshyam Choudhary, but didn't kill him immediately. Reports tell us that he walked 600m - think of that, over half a kilometre - asking for help. He got none. What he did get was a measure of internet fame. why? Because, instead of helping in some way, people yanked out their phones and filmed the man as he walked.

I made the inadvertent mistake - I have no excuse apart from "inadvertent" - of watching one of these clips. It is less than five seconds long, but it is nauseating and heartbreaking. But hardly because of the content, difficult as it is to watch Choudhary as he suffers. Instead, I owed my nausea to whoever shot this on their phone, and then clicked buttons to post the clip somewhere. Nausea, because why didn't this person jump to Choudhary's help? Why didn't they drop their phone, forget about going viral, and jump to help?

Pointless questions, of course. Not helping someone in extreme distress is a fully human trait, and has been documented and discussed since at least the murder of Kitty Genovese. And yet there's a small but substantial difference between Genovese and this burning man in Jaipur.

With Genovese, the people who chose not to help were in their apartments, peering from windows and behind curtains. They would have had to go out onto the street and confront a knife-wielding attacker. Admittedly, and sadly, few people find that kind of courage.

With Choudhary, the people who chose not to help were right next to him. Walking with him. Pointing their smartphones at him. Filming him. No knife, no attacker. Just the man himself, suffering horribly, desperate for help. All it needed was one person to rush him to a hospital. Maybe cover him with something first, though I don't know if that's advisable with burn victims. But anyway, Choudhary kept walking, beseeching.

Eventually, he asked someone to call his brother. The brother arrived and found Choudhary lying on the road. Took him to hospital. There, Choudhary died.

Think of it again. All it needed was one person. There in Jaipur, among all those around Choudhary using their phones, there wasn't such a one.

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PS: I'm not sure why I've sent this out to you. Except that since I read about Radheyshyam Choudhary, I've not been able to stop thinking about him. You are something of an outlet for my anguish.