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Under an Indian sky
This memoir too brings forth all these images as it provides a glimpse of life in a remote Bihar village through the eyes of an English nurse. The author records her 10-year-long stay with Santhals in the remote Titmoh, beginning from 1975. And, as expected, there are a number of detailed descriptions about village life that are superfluous and unneeded for an Indian audience. The impressions of this foreigner "about the main problem which was not lack of medical facilities but lack of food" has the inevitable doses of shock and surprise but largely frustration is reflected. Her responses may show irritability and disappointment that comes with the inability to change the system and the bleak scenario but at no point does she seem overstruck by poverty. In fact, at places she makes extremely pertinent and objective observations on life in the village. Her insights are thought-provoking as they lack the complacency with which we Indians accept poverty. She writes that she "realised that improving the lives of the poor was not so simple…. What the poor lacked was justice and the power to control their own lives." As expected from a medical professional, she handles patients deftly, making little fuss over the poor or non-existent infrastructure and non-availability of medicines. With few lamentations, she sets out to treat the sick and the dying, at times covering many miles to reach the patients. Many a time she succeeds but in a number of cases she is unable to save lives despite her best efforts. Even as Janet accepts the unchageables, she doesn’t lose hope. She and her husband, an Indian doctor, don’t just restrict themselves to bettering health service but work towards getting to the bottom of the "politics of hunger." Janet records: "We wanted to make them (villagers) aware that the roots of all ill-health lay in the people’s social and economic conditions…." The work put in by the author comes across as no mean achievements but each chapter merely runs like a short documentary on varied subjects like "Surviving from harvest to harvest," "Small family, happy family," and "The search for solutions." The book also fails to impart the feel of her 10-year-long stay in the village and her gradual moulding into an alien environment. In bits and pieces, the reader gets acquainted with her experiences and is apprised of her efforts. However, Janet gives few inklings of the time-frame or the departure of a decade. The birth of her daughter, her meeting and marriage with an Indian doctor, which arouse interest, are referred to clinically, almost in passing. Even the sufferings of the patients are kept at the physical plane; the emotional level more or less stays unexplored. A readable account but it doesn’t tug at your heart-strings. The cause of the Santhals just remains one of our many seemingly unchangeable concerns. |
Mention
any Indian village, and, particularly if it happens to be in Bihar,
images of stark poverty, absence of basic amenities, acute shortage of
food, and almost non-existent healthcare facilities come to mind.