Turn That Frown Upside Down

“Namaste. Yupity iru kinga?” The fingerless man put his palms together, bowed to me, and expressed the common Hindi greeting.

“Namaste. I am well, thank you. How are you today?” I responded with the normal greeting and listened as the translator explained the rest of my sentence to the man. I could see that the man was clearly not well. He had short stubs where his fingers belonged and was missing many toes. Along with his horribly disfigured face, I wondered how anyone like him could ever be well, and I regretted asking such a question.

“I am feeling fantastic! I am so pleased you and your friends were able to make it here safely,” the translator, Bijan was his name, deciphered the man’s response as the man smiled enthusiastically at me.

I froze. What? I must have misunderstood Bijan, or Bijan must have misunderstood the man. There was no way that this penniless, broken man could be so happy. However, the man’s wide, nearly toothless smile seemed to confirm Bijan’s translation and I found myself smiling back. I couldn’t help it, the man looked so excited, like a child on Christmas Eve. I asked him his name and Bijan told him mine and then informed me that the man’s name was Rajan.

We had just arrived in our first leper colony about two hours outside of Chennai, India. There I was, standing in the intense heat and humidity of Southern India, surrounded by nothing but the smell of body odor, dirt, and old, dilapidated shacks the color of dry mud, and one of the residents of the colony was acting as the self-appointed welcoming party? If I wasn’t awe-stricken the second I stepped out of the van, I was now.

I gazed around at all the new faces; some were old and wrinkled, their skin leathery due to prolonged sun exposure; some were young with softer faces. However, among every different face I noticed two commonalities: varying levels of disfigurement and a smile. Again I asked myself, why are these people so happy?

“Samantha!” The doctor who had accompanied us to the colony called out to me in his thick accent, leaving out the h in my name so that it sounded more like “Samanta.” Doctor Gopdal beckoned me over to his newly assembled medical station, he needed help filling buckets with soap and water. This was it, no turning back now. It was time to clean the hands and feet of the lepers.

“Jane, let’s go! I need help, these buckets are heavy.” Jane was my cousin and lifelong best friend, I knew I could count on her for anything, be it physical or moral support.

“Are you ready to do this, Sam?” Jane wasn’t talking about filling the buckets.

I pondered the question as we filled bucket after bucket. Was I ready to pop the ‘California Bubble’ that I had been living in for fifteen years? Was I ready to sit in the dirt for hours and scrub clean the open sores that replaced the fingers and toes of these people? It wasn’t until we were carrying the soapy water back to the already occupied line of people sitting in chairs that I answered.

“You know, I wasn’t sure at first. But I changed my mind the second I saw Rajan’s smile. I’m not worried at all, in fact I’m excited that we’re here.” And I was, too. Somehow the realization that these incredibly poor and unfortunate people were still capable of joy inspired me to do whatever I could to increase that happiness.

I escorted Rajan over to the last empty chair. He had purposely refrained from sitting in order to give others the chance to be washed first, but I insisted he come with me. I put gloves on and got to work, scrubbing away at his dark, calloused, three-toed feet. Once I finished his feet I moved onto his hands and was soon done with those, too. I got up to help Rajan stand, and when I did he grasped my own hand and thanked me with tears in his eyes. He spoke to me in very slow and broken English.

“Thank... you... much, Samantha. You my.... friend.” Like Doctor Gopdal, Rajan had trouble pronouncing his h’s, and it sounded more like, “Tank you much, Samanta. You my friend.”
My heart nearly leapt out of my chest and I felt a strong pressure building up in my throat. As tears blurred my vision, I squeezed Rajan’s hand and choked out a single word: “Friend.” Rajan smiled his nearly toothless, yellow smile at me once again, nodded, and signaled toward the other residents. There were more people to serve, more people with the potential to smile, more friends.

I immersed myself in the service and every time I received a smile and broken “thank you,” my heart grew a little bigger, my smile a little wider. Too quickly did the three hours pass, for I was surprised when Doctor Gopdal announced that we were done washing for the day. To my dismay we were leaving the colony and traveling to a different one about an hour away.

The next project was focused on anthropological studies, not medical service. I was sad to leave Madras, the name of the leper colony where we had been washing, and I failed to see how interviewing the lepers was in any way as fulfilling or helpful as cleaning their wounds. But, no matter how badly I wanted to stay in Madras to keep doing what I considered to be real service, there was nothing I could do.

We took Doctor Gopdal home and arrived at the Champa colony within an hour. My frown quickly returned as we walked past shack after shack and I saw the crumpled forms of lepers sleeping on nothing but dirt. We finally stopped the end of the row and walked into the shack on our left. I noticed there was neither a door nor a roof, and the only decorations were a large, red rubber ball, a dusty picture frame, and a clumsily made hay carpet that laid across the entry way.

“Namaste, Jai Mary,” Bijan greeted the 60-something-year old woman. Jai Mary was sitting cross-legged and had been staring expectantly at the entry. Only Bijan and one other person could comfortably fit inside Jai Mary’s little house , so Jane and I waited outside while he asked her if she would come out with us.

With Bijan’s help, Jai Mary hobbled out of her shack holding her red rubber ball. It was apparent she had had leprosy for a long time, because she had no fingers and her bare feet were more like stumps, lacking all appendages. Nevertheless, she had a twinkle in her eye as she handed me the ball and motioned for me to throw it back to her. I was confused. She wanted to play pass with me? She had no fingers, how did she expect to catch the ball? I hesitated, not wanting to throw it because I didn’t want her to be embarrassed when she failed to catch it.

Again, with an encouraging smile, she motioned toward the ball and then herself. I surrendered and lightly tossed the ball her way, hoping that she would catch it. To my dismay, she was unable to grasp the ball between her arms and it rolled to the side. I was waiting for the inevitable frown that would mar her joyful expression once she was reminded of her extreme disability, but it never came. Jai Mary laughed and clapped her hands, as did Bijan and Lauren, the girl leading this anthropological study.

It wasn’t until I let it out that I realized I had been holding my breath. Jai Mary’s laughter and comforting smile helped me relax. I realized that she had been shunned by her own people and forced to live in a leper colony, the last thing she wanted was to be treated differently yet again. So we played and laughed and got comfortable with one another, and finally we began the interview.

I turned on my recorder and asked her my questions, “How old were you when you contracted leprosy, and what happened when everyone found out?” Bijan

“I was twenty-two years old when the authorities found out I had leprosy. They came to my home and forced me to leave my husband and three children to come live here in Champa,” Bijan translated Jai Mary’s answer.

“Have you seen any of your family members since then?”

“They try to visit sometimes and they send letters a couple times a year. They cannot visit often or people might find out they have a leper for a mother. Even though they do not have my horrible disease, they will be treated differently because of association.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“It is the way our society works, this is not America.”

Jai Mary and I continued our interview for about an hour before Lauren told me I had gathered sufficient information. I asked Bijan to tell her I had no more questions and she responded with a grim smile look and uttered one sentence in a husky voice.

“I very much enjoyed our time together... sister.”

Sister. Jai Mary had called me her sister. I felt hot tears running down my face as I leaned over to hug her. She squeezed me back and put her hands in mine. I held them as she pulled me to my feet and began dancing with me. Other residents came to watch and one of them turned on music. Soon, half of the small colony had come to watch and many of the people were dancing with one another. It was a day of laughter and joy, tears, hugs, service, and love.