Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

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Mitthu with her baby boy

 

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My friend Juman is on the local village council or Panchayat. He is here with his wife Sahara, being verbally assailed on a Sunday afternoon by a woman with a grievance about land ownership. All too common there I'm afraid, and likely she had a case, but not one the Panchayat could easily fix. Certainly not Juman on a Sunday afternoon.

 

But she refused to calm down.

 

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She didnt see me approach, and when she finally turned to storm off at the clearly unsatisfactory end of her furious tirade, she suddenly noticed me and stopped dead in her tracks. I actually thought she was going to faint dead away. Apparently she had never seen a white person before. When I began speaking to her gently in Bengali, she panicked, and fled at top speed, with Juman and Sahara literally corpsing with helpless laughter beside me.

 

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When Shabana was 11 she was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

 

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Her father, Manan, once a relatively well off farmer, bankrupted himself long before I ever met him, buying ineffectual homeopathic medicines for her. Manan had massive, mallet-like hands, which he constantly flexed. His anger and frustration were so close to the surface, that I felt he wanted to lash out at everything and everyone around him. I'm sure I would have done. But he never did.

 

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I arranged for a friend of mine from Calcutta, Dr. Subhasis Chakrabarti to come see her.

 

Edited March 3, 2013 by alanna

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Subha was wonderful with her.

 

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We took her for x-rays, paid for a specialist to see her as well but found that unfortunately the tumor had become inoperable. The tumor had stunted her growth, and she had become blind. She is 15 in this photo.

 

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Regrettably, despite everyone's best efforts, she died a few years later. But I will always remember her bravery, and bright personality.

 

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Caused a near riot when I visited the local state school (which Paddyfield's children were too poor to attend).

 

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Eventually the teachers gave up trying to maintain order and got in on the act.but as you can see they were not best pleased. State education in India is very regimented.