|
She surprised me with another kiss for an answer.
"What are you saying with that?" I asked.
"I am saying that I love what you represent, and Fred too. It took someone like you, from a foreign country, to help me to better myself," she said proudly. "This help should have come from my own family, but it didn't. Only afterwards, after Fred had raised me up and had helped me to become a medical doctor was I finally welcome again in my brother's house, now that I was rich, as he put it. The best of all is, that the only promise that Fred had asked me to make in return for his help, was that I would do the same for others. I have done that. But now you are telling me that I was living a lie. I kissed you, because you are telling me that I have indeed been helped by my real family, the only family that matters, the family that Fred had opened up for me. I kissed you, because that is suddenly most precious to me. Now I have to give in return even more to fulfil my promise to Fred."
"You mean your promise to your real family?" I interjected. "In your profession, that promise is easily fulfilled."
She nodded. "Actually, that is why I had chosen to become a doctor. The Dalits receive so little help from anyone. I didn't realize, though, until recently that the promise that I had made to Fred never ends. It is the kind of promise that can never really be fulfilled. It's the same with a kiss. The kiss falls into this category. There must always be another kiss and another after that. That is also why I don't like to work in the rich clinics in New Delhi where I could earn twenty times as much as I do working for the Dalits in the villages. Working to become rich just isn't a big enough reward for spending ones life on, is it? Occasionally, I have to work in New Delhi of course, just to get enough money together to be able to do my work in the villages. More and more people are becoming so desperately poor that they can't pay me. So I have to take time out occasionally and work the richly-paying jobs."
"And that is what you are doing now?" I asked. "You are working here in Delhi to make some extra cash."
She shook her head, but then she said yes. "Yes, that is what I am doing right now, only the reason isn't money this time. The reason is that it has become too dangerous for me to be in the villages with the killings still fresh in everyone's mind. I suppose I'll have to stay away from the villages for a few more months."
"But if you do, what happens to your patients?" I asked. "Who looks after them when you are not there?"
"No one will look after them. They'll fend for themselves. They suffer the fate they would suffer all the time if I didn't exist, or if I wouldn't come back. If Fred hadn't helped me to become a doctor, many people would be dead by now, who are still alive. They are part of my family too. The help that saved their life simply wouldn't have been available if Fred hadn't helped me. Yes, the people in the villages are more vulnerable now, but in a few months, after the Thevars have killed enough to still their rage, I'll be able to go back and help the people who have made it through this hell."
She added that the vigilante killings are actually only the most visible tip of the iceberg. The economic sanctions that nobody hears about, are the real killers. She pointed out that so far no one has been able to prevent those murderous sanctions. No laws exist, or are possible, to address that problem."
"That's idiotic, isn't it?" I commented. "The Thevars are killing off their own workers."
"I am sure this kind of idiocy doesn't happen anywhere else," she said.
I hugged her close to me and told her that she was sadly mistaken. I told her that when people become empty inside, to the point that they cannot see another person as a human being, anything can happen, and everything that one can imagine has already happened, and might still be happening.
Next Page
|| - page index -
|| - chapter index -
|| - Exit -
||
|
