Hating and Loving India

My sister recently asked me-Do you love India or do you hate it? My impulse immediately was “both.” But the more I reflected on my reasons for both I realized that the reasons I dislike it are perhaps because I feel insignificant—insignificant in a land of over a billion, insignificant in a hospital that has a pretty good doctor:patient ratio without me. The drive to be significant—is it me? Is it American? Human?
It seems like the lesson of “be” not “do” is a lesson that I have to relearn yet another time here in India. Maybe significance is just being, or listening to stories of peoples’ lives, or guessing how many rupees a women made for her daily labors selling coconuts, or quietly reflecting on the best way deal with the problems of prostitution, or HIV, or female infanticide.
Here are a couple significant people that have given me much to think about—and maybe you too.
1) Sueha-a 20-year-old female who came to gynecology clinic with complaints of missing her period for the last 3 months. She had been married just 6 months ago in an arranged marriage. As the story unfolded, we discovered that her husband had left her because he believed she wouldn’t be able to bear him any children. Sueha most likely could never marry again because her parents would not be able to afford a 2nd dowry and she now had the reputation of being barren, even though this most likely was not the cause for her missed periods.
2) Hannah-a 2-year-old female who I met in an orphanage for children who are victims of infanticide. When a family has a 2nd or 3rd baby girl (or a handicapped child), it is not uncommon for them to poison her, suffocate her, or leave her in sewage gutters because they cannot afford another dowry for their daughter’s marriage.
3) Sarang-a 65-year-old male with beautiful snow-white hair that came to surgery clinic for a dressing change of a chronic ulcer on his foot. He had leprosy. As I bent down to examine his foot which already had 2 missing toes, I noticed a stream of tears traveling down his left cheek, disappearing quickly into his unkempt beard. These were not tears of physical pain, since clearly he had no sensation in his foot. Perhaps these were tears of loneliness, rejection, or embarrassment; I’m not sure. It was the first time I had seen tears in India.
India—a land of a billion. Slowly I am realizing that each woman I see carrying a pile of 5 foot sticks gracefully on her head, 10 year olds shoveling piles of gravel on the roadside (even though child labor is outlawed), and a man shepherding 15 goats in the middle of the road all have a beautiful story with some mixture of joy and sorrow in their life.
And I realize I love India.