February 17, 2006
(I didn’t have time to post this before I left for Rajasthan)


I’m sitting here in an open air assembly hall. The bug-zapper sizzles and crackles while dusk advances upon me. Two benefactors of the hospital have come by to visit with a few patients. A few that I just interviewed days ago. One suffered a heart attack not long ago and hasn’t obtained his medication for it yet. The other has cancer in his foot but won’t be able to do anything about it for some time. Until then they just hope it doesn’t metastasize. I knew nothing about neither of their problems. I knew about the heart attack but had thought it transpired a while ago. I guess that seeing his amputations and deformities distracted me from inquiring about the rest of his health. In the meantime I wait for Mr. Raju.

Rajukhakha is a saint. Uncle Raju is what they call him.

This last week I’ve been trying to put together a project to fill what time I have left here in Mumbai. I decided that I would compile stories from patients here at Acworth Leprosy Hospital as well as some of the workers associated with it. One of the men that I’ve come to meet is a man who for the last thirteen years has been volunteering at the hospital. He runs a watch parts company and does well for himself but his real work in life is caring for the people that have suffered from leprosy.

I’ve written a bit on leprosy before but I’d like to take a quick moment to reiterate some things. If I saw someone with huge scars on their arm I might think that they were once in an accident of some kind. The scar is no more than a physical mark of a past occurrence. Leprosy is curable. Multi-drug therapy is extremely effective against the bacterium that causes leprosy, and with a few doses the person becomes non-infectious. But unlike the scars left behind by an accident or a cut, the deformities left behind by leprosy marks that person as a leper for life. When people see someone with these characteristic marks they think "this person has leprosy" not "this person had leprosy". For this reason the majority of suffering that comes with leprosy is psychological and caused by society. This is why so many live at the hospital, because they simply have nowhere else to go after their families rejected them.

Mr. Raju tries to make sure that everyone gets what they need. The hospital gives them a place to live and food to eat. It handles the wounds and ulcers that inevitably arise due to permanent nerve damage. But it can’t do much else. This is where Rajukhakha comes in. He gets them glasses, buys their medication when they can’t afford it. He has employed some after they’ve been rehabilitated and even given some short term housing. What he gives to them most is attention and hope. When I followed him from ward to ward, bed to bed, person to person the amount of love and affection he gave, and in turn received, was heart warming. His sincerity is self evident. Knowing that one person can’t efficiently provide for close to two hundred people, he’s organized more than twenty donors to help with the expenses. Even on a night when his own granddaughter was in the hospital he still gave equal time and attention to over fifty residents at the hospital.
Thank God for people like Rajukhakha, whatever their cause, because it is people that lift up others that make a difference.