The Motorcycle Diary or The Gospel of T

            Westerners travelling or living in India tend to avoid the glances of other foreigners.  We’ve labelled this “Get out of My Fantasy Syndrome”, or GMFS for short.  Someone who believes that they are on a grand adventure to the far flung corners of the globe doesn’t like to see, purely for example’s sake, a white family holding hands (with a baby in a sling) sauntering down their Silk Route.  So we’ve made it a point to lock eyes with all tourists and flash them a big smile.  Their physical response reveals a lot about their character... in particular if they’re suffering from GMFS or not.  Last month, a grey headed Caucasian man was sitting on the edge of Bidhan Bazaar next to a tin trunk and several jholas full of supplies, I figured he must be a “local” foreigner.  He lifted his head and met me with a blank stare.  I smiled and slowly a smile crept across his face.  Rounding off the encounter with a head nod, I was getting on my way when suddenly he said,  “Where... you... from?”

            “Would you like to know what country I’m from or where I live?”

            “Yes... Where you from.”

`           “Well then, I’m from America but live a couple hours outside Kalimpong.”

            “America.  I American too!”

            It was a surprising to hear considering his broken and awkward sounding English.

            “Kalimpong.  You live in Kalimpong.  Here look.”

            He dug around in his bag and pulled out a stack of photos.  The next thing I knew there was a picture in my hands of a young Nepali girl with her breasts exposed and a large tumour on her side.  He said with an honest smile on his face, “This girl is from Kalimpong.  That’s where you live.”

            With this he began passing pictures to me in quick succession which played almost like crude  stop motion animation.  Tumour.  Hands making an incision.  Patient flayed open. Tumour being removed.  Second patient with breasts exposed.  Tumour.  Hands making an incision.  Patient flayed open. Tumour being removed.  Third patient with breasts exposed. Tumour.  Hands making an incision.  Patient flayed open. Tumour being removed.   In the dense crowded Indian market,  a small crowd began to develop gawking at the photos now in my hands.  The environment in which the procedures were being done was primitive at best but more accurately cluttered and filthy.  “This is what I do. What you are doing?”

            “Umm, well...”, handing the pictures back to their owner, “we uhh... well, my wife and I run a small clinic and ambulance service in a remote area.”

            My new companion’s eyes lit up with wonder, “You’re... you’re... you’re a doctor.”

            “No, I’m an EMT and I studied Primary Health Care.”

            Suddenly his brow furrowed and eyes squinted with inquisition.  “You a Hindu?”

            My apprehension began to be revealed in my face.  I shifted from side to side.  The crowd was still lingering perhaps waiting for more dirty pictures. “No, I’m a Christian.”

            Forehead still full of hardened ridges he probed, “A Buddhist?  A Muslim?”

“No, no.  A Christian.”

The wrinkles flattened and taut skin relaxed. “Oh, oh... okay then.  I’m a doctor too.”

A long forgotten conversation I’d had with a tile merchant burst forth from my memory.  He’d said that there was an American named Dr. T______ living out towards P_____.  He’d said that he lived very simply and was doing many wonderful things for the poor and needy.

“Oh, are you Dr. T______?”

His eyes flashed in astonishment, “Yes, yes!  How.. how... how you know?”

“Oh, a shop keeper told me about you once.”

“Really?  Did it make you want to come a meet me?”

“Uh, yeah.  Since we’re doing medical work too I was interested to see what you’re doing.”

Dr. T______ began to dig in his bag again and eventually pulled a brochure promoting his “Missions Hospital”.    It obviously contained more graphic imagery so I thanked him and quickly stowed in my bag.  “Okay, well I’ve got a lot to do before leaving town so I’m going to have to get going.”

“You’ll come visit me right?”

 After a half hearted “Sure” I headed down Hillcart Road hoping to check some boxes off my list.  The problem was that Dr. T______ wouldn’t leave me alone.   I wished I could forget him but he plagued my thoughts.  I hadn’t felt so disturbed in years.  Now I was the one wishing a foreigner would get out of my fantasy.  The list in my pocket was invisibly growing; it was another situation which would require personal action.  Certain boxes would have to be checked and soon.  On my way back to pick up the Donkey from the workshop,  I stopped by the Hero Motorcycles showroom and put a down payment on an Impulse, the first off-road bike available in the Indian market.  2012 is going to be a long journey and there are few roads where I’m headed.

____   

            The plan was to have someone give me some lessons but the motorcycle arrived the day after I ordered it (they had told me to expect 15-20 days).  The dealer told me to keep it under 40 and not to carry other passengers for the first 500k to let the engine break in.  I figured that would give me time get used to the machine.  With little more experience than 2 days on a rented motorcycle (10 years earlier) and some scooter driving in my youth, I set off to tackle the narrow, congested and precipitous NH-31a.  This year I will have to visit the remote villages of Lungshel, Git Kolbong, Chuikim and Daragaon every month to raise up our community nurses/train community health volunteers (on top of all my normal running).  Some quick tabulations let me know that I would save the cost of the bike in a year in fuel and maintenance costs.  Additionally, it would allow me to keep all 3 ambulances available 24/7. 

        Days after the purchase, I found myself inching down towards Lungshel on, what I’d deemed the previous month, the worst road in the area.  It felt a bit like learning the trapeze with no net.  The next morning Sushila, Devaki, Sheila and I were sitting in the warm sun in front of Ishmael’s thatch roofed kitchen.  It was almost time for the community health volunteer training to start.  Fifteen candidates from the surrounding villages were walking the paths to attended the first of 10 sessions we’ll teach this year.  The peace of the morning was suddenly broken by Han Sing bursting into the courtyard with his five year old son seizing in his arms.  His face was etched with worry.  Ashyal’s eyes were alert but jaw was clenched tight.  This epileptic seizure, his first ever, had already been going on for 25 minutes.  At the beginning of the episode, the boy had vomited but his clenched jaw had caused him to aspirate instead of expel.  We could hear it rattling in his lungs.  Devaki did percussion on his back and we kept head slightly lowered.  This provided a degree of relief but as the seizure neared the 1 hour mark concern grew again.  His lips were turning blue and he seemed to be taking a turn for the worst.  It would take the Rhino 3 hours just to arrive.  All of the local vehicles had already headed out to Gorubhatan for the day.  There was only one option to save Ashyal’s life... the motorcycle.

            But with a terrifying road, a seizing child, an un-experienced driver and only 150cc’s at our disposal... it didn’t seem like a good option.  Along with risking an accident, there was the chance I’d trash the engine during this break in period.  Then there were the 15 village women I was supposed to be teaching already.   Looking at Ashyal’s face, only a little younger than Asher’s, I thought, “What would I do for my own son?” 

            “We are going to the hospital now.  I’ll call one of our ambulances to meet us at Lava.  This kid needs oxygen soon.”

            Han Sing laid his child across his lap, wrapped his arms around him and hung onto the bike with his legs.  It took all of my strength to keep the bike balanced as it spun through the loose dirt and rumbled across the patches of cobblestone.  The engine choked and sputtered on the steep incline.  I rounded one corner into a steep rocky slope.  The weight on the back brought the front wheel off the ground and the motor died.  As we were skidding backwards Han Sing jumped off the bike with his son still safely cradled.  The bike tipped and I slowly laid it down onto a rock which scratched the side guard.  “Laaah, Sir your new bike!”

            “Are you okay?  Is Ashyal okay?”

            “Yes, no problem.”

            “Bikes can be replaced, kids can’t... let’s go.”

            With trembling limbs, I took another stab at it.  We sputtered and lurched up the mountain one switchback at a time.  It was one of the hardest and scariest things I’ve ever done.  Eventually, we reached the pavement and I cranked the throttle.  40 Kph wasn’t going to be fast enough for this kid.  Simon met us in Lava, had the O2 on him in no time and took off for Kalimpong.  By the time they reached, Ashyal’s cyanosis had disappeared and he was much more coherent.  The threat of pneumonia (due to the vomit in his lung) was still quite high and he was admitted into the hospital.  Back in Lungshel, Devaki and Sushila had demonstrated their adaptability.  I took the next day’s class on Holistic Health.  It had been three years since folks of Lungshel asked me to do something to improve the health of their village .  It was good to be fulfilling the promise I’d made so long ago. 

It wasn’t until my return journey on Thursday that I realized the insanity of what we’d done.  The bike struggled under the weight of my solo body.   I lost traction and in one steep hairpin and scratched the other side guard.  There was no explanation for our successful ascent apart from some high octane Spirit in my tank and a supernatural gyroscope keeping things in balance.    

_____

            Dr. T______ wouldn’t leave me alone; he haunted my thoughts.  The evening after we first met, I perused his pamphlet.  There was a series of images of him amputating the leg of a man afflicted by elephantiasis.  The “operation room” was more like a tool shed.  In one photo he grasped the severed limb in victory with blood trickling over his un-gloved hands.  The caption informed the reader that the man had been suffering from the condition because he had been worshipping Ganesh (the Hindu deity which takes the form of an elephant).  In another series of images he was amputating a boy’s arm it the same ramshackle facility.  In this one, the boy’s arm had died because he used it to hold the sticks of incense before an idol.  In yet another, a old man was having a large “egg”, tumour, removed from his back which had been “laid” there by the snake goddess Manosha.  I’d talked to several expats and missions folk in the Siliguri area to see if they had the skinny on the situation.  Everyone seemed to have a good impression of him, though few had actually met him.  As for me this Gospel of T______’s wasn’t adding up.

Finally, Tigi put me in contact with local Pastor named Enos.  We talked over the phone.  “I’ve been trying to get someone to take action about this guy for years.  No one wants anything to do with it.  He’s been in and out of jail a couple times.  He’s been beaten up by Hindu fundamentalist and run out of three or four communities.  I’d heard that the main reason in one community was that he’d been exploiting women and children... though I don’t know if it’s true.  When this situation finally explodes it is going to affect expats and folks in ministry throughout the region.  I’m glad you want to do something about it.”

            “Let’s go and meet him at his place first.  I would like to have a little more experience with him first to confirm my suspicions.  If we see him at his ‘hospital’ we will have a good grasp of what he’s up too.”

            “Let me know the next time you’re in town and we’ll go together.”

______ 

            A high pressure front ensured crystal clear Himalayan views and frigid air as I sped towards Daragaon on the “Mosquito” (thanks for the name Chris).  Sam arrived at the end of the road a couple hours after me since he was using public transport.  We hiked up to the village together.  During our frequent rest stops, we batted theological topics back and forth like a game of badminton.  Up the hill, Tilak and Binod’s houses were as warm and welcoming as usual.  My eyes silently moistened with warm tears remembering, yet again, how much I missed them... this Hindu family who lives out the gospel more vividly than almost any missionary or pastor I’ve ever met.  Aama giggled over the pictures of Cedar and gave me motherly advice.  Papa came in for tea after completing his evening prayers.  Tilak, freshly back from the cowshed, sat down and chatted about the program which is supposed to bring a vehicle road to the village.  Meena was smiling and joking as she handed us our tea as well.  Auntie, kicked off her gum boots to warm her hard aching bones next to the fire.  Her face warmed and softened as well when I gave a gift of pistachios and cashews from the bazaar.  I’m glad that I’ll be visiting once a month throughout 2012.

            The next morning, the little blue cabin lay ready and waiting for its next inhabitant.  Sam, a volunteer from Texas, will spend the next 4 months teaching at the school in Daragaon.  We packed up all of Ian’s belongings and swept out all the mouse poop.  In the afternoon, I met with the guys from the Club.  We worked on, not only how to keep the School and Swasta Kendra open, but how to bring it up to the standards we’ve intended since the beginning.  The earthquake last fall cracked the foundation of one of the school buildings and the Swasta Kendra needs fresh paint and tiles in the kitchen.  $1500 should get all of the renovations done.  Binod, Arjun and Dinesh have finally agreed to accept payment after teaching 7 years unpaid!  There are three new local teaching staff which have been signed for 2012.  Anu, having just returned from 6 months nurse’s training at Gayaganga, will assume a head paid position at the Swasta Kendra.  Rumours which had circulated about her last fall proved to be trumped up.  Sabita, Kausila and Devi will remain on as volunteers and given a stipend for their work.  The Feeding Program has fattened up and sent away over 30 severely malnourished kids.  Twelve kids, whose families are too poor to provide enough calories, will stay on throughout 2012 to prevent relapse.  To feed them each 25 highly nutritious meals a month will cost a mere $95.  All said and done, $500 dollars a month, 2 days of mentorship a month, and several committed individuals will keep health and education on the rise in this remote corner of the Indian Himalayas. (Please consider setting up a recurring monthly donation to cover part of those need).

            That evening I was thinking about Dr. T______ again when Binod came into chat.  A bit into the conversation he said, “Ryan Sir, I’ve been noticing something lately.  People are really changing... and for the better.  Folks have put up trash bins around the village and disposing of waste properly.  There is less alcoholism than before.  People are taking their health seriously now whereas before they didn’t even know what a paracetemol (acetaminophen) tablet was.  They don’t realize it but the thing that started it all was the work you started here, which we did together.  I’m so glad that you’ve come back to help.  If things would’ve fallen apart this year, we would’ve lost all of our forward momentum.  Things have to keep pushing forward, this can't stop.  If it were to all the naysayers would shake their heads and say "See that's what serving people gets you".  We have to show them something better."

    As often does, the parable of the yeast came back into my heart.  The women sprinkles the yeast on a small lump of dough and leaves it alone.  When she comes back after some time it has silently and invisibly risen into enough for three loaves.  Love works like that as well.

_____

       The drive to Siliguri the next day was 6 1/2 hours with 5,000 ft of ascent and 10,000 ft of descent.  It gave me plenty of time to think about Dr. T______ and that he surely felt he was showing people something better as well.  The gnawing discomfort returned and I made up my mind to go and visit him the next day no matter what.  There was no way to make him get out of my fantasy except to meet him head on.

       That Thursday, when Tigi, Enos and I arrived Mr. D_____ was giving a teaching to a large group of patients waiting outside his clinic.  The place was quaint, almost charming on the exterior.  There was a small simple building serving as a dispensary, a large hall for long term patients, a well and outhouses situated under a grove of betel nut palms and a couple of swings to relax in.  It was something I could have been responsible for in a different time and space but here a small, middle aged Nepali man, who had the demanor of a beaten dog, was translating the Doctor's speech.  He was saying that the patients were ill due to the fact that they had worshipped false gods.  After pointing to a scripture the translator read out, " And neither drunkards, nor revilers, nor fornicators, nor homosexuals, nor idol worshippers will inherhit the kingdom of heaven."  Dr. T______ said his first words in a local languge, "idol worshippers", and began shaking his head in the negative.  Suddenly he looked up noticing us, was happy to see us and invited us to sit and chat leaving the throng of desperate patients to wait. 

         He told us stories of all the times he had been beaten up and driven from villages by Hindu extremists.  His clothes were filthy, one pant leg was hiked up and he obviously walked barefoot most of the time.  As his monlogue continued he gave a very shocking opinion.  He said that the “New Testament tells us to turn the other cheek but the Old Testament tells us to take vengeance on our enemies.  It is the Holy Spirit which tells us which one we are to do.” At this he ran inside and got a guitar and began to sing a Nepali hymn about the Holy Spirit.  Several awkward minutes passed with him singing and the eyes of the patients boring into the back of my head.  Immediately following this he ran back into his room and brought out a machete saying, “Sometimes we are called to turn the other cheek and sometimes we are called to cut the other’s cheek” referring to the fundamentalists who frequently challenge him.  At this he threw the machete and it stuck in the ground inches from Tigi's foot.  Tigi showed a formerly unseen grit by not even finishing!  Then the Doctor said,  “You see I’m a military man... Navy and Marines and I know how to defend myself.”

I had noticed a sign hanging on the very front of the building saying that the “hospital” is partially supported by the U.S. NAVY.  He claims to have been a Navy ship doctor, and also spent time as a physician for the U.S. Marine Corps.  The “support” is the pension he says he still receives from his service.  The mixing of claimed U.S. Military support, extremely inflammatory religious rhetoric and blatant malpractice creates an almost unimaginably explosive combination in this internationally sensitive area.  It was far more than I could have imagined.

  He agreed to take us a tour of his facility.  The first room he called the “Minor O.T." was full of clutter stacked almost to the ceiling.  There was an office chair amongst the filth which he said was where he did his dental surgery.  The “Major O.T.” was something impossible to even imagine.  The ceiling was a web of chains with metal hooks hanging from them.  From the metal hooks hung all of his (at least I’m assuming) surgical implements.  There were children’s school scissors, a large dirty and rusty pair of tailor's shears, ancient haemostats and forceps, a battery powered lamp or two, etc.  A patient was lying on the cramped, stained bed being treated for a condition T______ couldn’t exactly describe to me.  Along with stacks of rubbish, similar to the “Minor O.T.” there were piles of discarded medicine vials, used syringes, soiled bandages, etc. 

He mentioned that he had a blood bank, so I asked to see it.  There were three units of blood in obviously recycled transfusion bags (crusted with dried blood, blood in the lines) hanging open in the fridge next to his milk and personal food store.  I asked where he got the blood from and he said it came from the “the boys who help out around here.  We are prepping for an amputation so we’ve gotta keep the stocks up.”

Mr. D_____ has constructed a large ward which also serves as his church.  There were nearly 25 beds, half of which were filled with patients.  He pointed out a teenage boy he’d performed a circumcision on, a lady who “probably has TB”, a man with gangrene on his left foot (the aforementioned amputation) and some people who’d been “waiting months for their surgery”. “Dr.” T______ mentioned that he had successfully treated multiple couples for infertility after performing a minor operation on the female partner.  When asked what this procedure was he responded, “It is an experimental surgery.”

I asked, “So you’re doing experimental surgery on people here?”

He responded, “Yeah, it’s sort of like that.  You see we’re a research hospital as well.”

Outside, the photos I’d seen in the bazaar were pasted on the wall for everyone to see.  There were more signs that something sexually perverse was happening as well.  Having seen more than enough we took our leave.

As we drove home mixed feelings flooded my heart.  On one hand I felt like a man who just discovered his neighbor's basement was full of corpses.  On the other hand I felt like I'd just seen a distorted twisted image of myself in a fun house mirror.  Despite the obvious crimes against humanity going on I couldn't shake the feeling that he had, at least on one level, good intention and felt that he was doing something good.  He was fully and sincerely convinced that he was bringing physical and spiritual healing to others. That doesn't justify or validate his actions in any way but what if I slowly became mentally ill and there wasn't anyone to recognize it?  What if I was warped by time and circumstances into a monster I never intended to be?  Could I be doing something in good intention to make things "better" which is actually harming others?  Despite my horror, I couldn't help but feel compassion for Dr. T______.

 Amanda did a Google search on Mr. D_____.  A few hits came up but one was significant. It was a post on a blog from 2003:

I want to share with you a story that I hope touches you as it did me. Here's the background: Seven or eight years ago, I was a consultant with the Expressway Authority and we were preparing to build the innovative reversible-lanes project that has since won some 20 design awards. There was a decrepid old house on Authority property in downtown Tampa that had to be removed. Years before, it had been used for storage, but had been empty for many years. The workers who were going to tear it down found a bunch of stuff in the house ("junk," they said) and hauled it off. 
The next day, I was walking through the office reception area, and the receptionist asked me to talk to a gentleman who had come to complain about his personal belongings being stolen by the workers. He was an unemployed, homeless man with many personal challenges who had been "living" in the ramshackle structure. While he was at a soup kitchen the day before, all of his worldly possessions (clothes, books, personal items) had been removed, even his broken down bicycle that was his only means of transport. 
Something about him touched me, and we talked for a couple of hours about his very difficult life. I asked what his "dream" for himself was, and he said he wanted to be a missionary. Longer story shorter, the Authority The Governing Board were inspired to give the man $4,000 to pay for the medical missionary school he wanted to attend. He promised to make us "proud" and to report back on his progress. This morning, I received the following email, below which is my reply. 
Subject: Thanking you greatly for your help to me
Hello Mr. A..... from Northern India. I was the young man you helped to go to missionary school from the authorities at the Crosstown Expressway Authority in Tampa. I am now a Missionary Doctor, Dental Surgeon, and Medical Surgeon working now for 4 years on the Nepal border frontier of Northern India. Your help to me as I was living in their house under the bridge has made it possible for me to be here in India for many years doing many serious operations to help the poor and needy. I wanted to send you an update on my activities as you requested me, when you gave me the check for $4,000. Thank you Sir...for understanding my situation there in Tampa and for providing that money for my training...which I am now putting to good use. 
Sincerely, Dr. T______ D_____ MD

       Could we be unknowingly, sincerely and with good intention supporting atrocities?  Do we contribute to systems which claim to help but actually harm our neighbor?  I took comfort in the realization that my gospel and the gospel of T______ are diametrically opposed.  The Doctor tries to heal from the outside in, by piercing with words, chopping off limbs and cutting out evil, to get at the spirit.  My work is to sprinkle others with the spirit of love and then wait patiently in hope that it will silently and invisibly bring healing from the inside out.  The great irony, of course, is that Mr. D_____ attributes all illnesses as a submission to Satan and he himself is unknowingly suffering from a serious mental illnesses which causes him to play right into the Devil's hands.   The contrast between him and those "idol worshipers" I used to live with in Daragaon, who have humbly, sanely and sacrificially servedtheir community year after year, couldn't be any more stark.  For peace I return to Jesus's words... "You will know a tree by its fruit".

_____

       That Sunday night I stayed up until midnight writing a letter to the U.S Consulate hoping to diffuse this landmine situation.  My hope was to prevent another violent encounter, religious tensions and harm to the innocent.  Early the next morning I was on the Mosquito again riding the rough road to Git Kolbong.  There was to be a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Ecta Health Point.  As I was drinking tea with the main men of the community my phone stated buzzing and Enos' name was on the screen.

       "Ryan did you hear what happened?"

       "No, what?"

       "Dr. T______ was severely beaten last night and is in police custody."

         Like it or not we share this fantasy with others.  We can avert our glances, pretend they're not there, but perhaps that is what happened with Mr. D_____.  No one cared enough to notice, so no one noticed he was getting sick.  As a result there is a decade long trail of destruction, injury and abuse.  This is not a fantasy after all, this is life.  They are not monsters after all, they are our neighbors, brothers, sisters.  Let's lock eyes with those we meet, flash them a smile and then see what happens.