Travels in Himachal Pradesh III: Saints with human faces

One of the benefits of growing up in Hong Kong, having worked in Cambodia, and my long association with the Mission Servants to Asia’s Urban Poor, is the number of inspiring people I have been privileged to know: modern-day saints who have given of themselves in the service of others.

Sheila and Laji are two such people. Both from South India, they met and married at medical school in Ludhiana. Shortly after qualifying, they moved to Manali to fill a gap left by the departure of the resident physician at the local mission hospital. That was forty years ago. Laji – an energetic and engaging character – recounts how they had a six-month handover during which he was taught to do everything – general medicine, infectious diseases, surgery, anaesthesia, orthopaedics, gynaecology. As the sole resident doctors and with no tertiary hospital to refer to, they just had to cope with whatever came their way. For many of their patients – some of whom had trekked for days on foot or donkey back to reach them – they knew that, no matter how unqualified they felt, if they did nothing, the patient would die.

And so they stayed on in this remote part of Northern India, learning on the job, making do with whatever limited resources they had, and trusting that somehow their efforts would make a difference to at least some of those who came to them.

As we travelled through the Spiti Valley, it soon became clear just how much of a difference they have made to so many people’s lives. Everywhere we went, people would come up and greet them warmly and Laji would tell us how they had helped them: ‘I treated that woman’s brother for meningitis’ or ‘this person was brought to us as a child with intestinal obstruction’. For some, the outcomes had been less favourable: adults with cancers for which no treatment was available; those with advanced tuberculosis which had spread throughout their bodies; or alcohol-related liver disease. Or the woman who had trekked three days across the snow-covered passes to Manali, carrying her child wrapped warmly on her back, only to find that the child had died on the way.

Our landlady in Mane, was one of the more fortunate ones. Laji had first met this wonderful couple when he had come trekking in the Spiti Valley. J had been his guide and, at the end of the trek, had asked Laji if he could take a look at his wife, S, who was unwell. Laji had diagnosed peritonitis with advanced shock, but with no medical equipment to hand felt very pessimistic about the outcome.

At that time, Mane had no road or bridge connecting it to the outside world. So they had set out along a narrow track up the valley, S on donkey back. Several kilometres up there was a cable basket crossing to the road on the other side. There they were able to flag down a passing truck to Kaza where Laji was able to beg some IV fluids to mitigate some of the effects of shock. They then hired a jeep to take them the arduous 200km journey over the Kunzum and Rohtang passes to Manali.

Remarkably, S survived, though left infertile as a result. She and her husband were wonderful hosts during our two days in Mane.

For me, those two days were really the highlight of the trip. Mane is a beautiful village, nestling in a small valley on the South side of the main Spiti river. The village itself is surrounded by small fields and groves of golden poplar trees. In spite of a steady increase in prosperity since the building of the road – the valley here is a prime area for growing peas which are now exported as a cash crop to the rest of India – the village retains some of its charm and a way of life that has existed for centuries. Until recently all the homes were traditional Tibetan houses of mud and wattle, each with its store of cow dung for burning in the tandoor stove that heated the one room for cooking, eating, sitting and sleeping.

That morning we went for a walk over to the next village. Strolling out through the small paddies, we stopped to watch two of the villagers ploughing a field with a pair of Choru (a robust cross between a yak and a Jersey cow). As they ploughed, the farmer sung a repetitive chant to encourage the beasts as they broke up the hard, dry soil. And then, cutting across the serenity of the scene, as though to remind us that Western ‘progress’ infiltrates everywhere, the grating sound of the Nokia theme tune broke the stillness of the rural life.

Once ploughed, teams of donkeys carried huge sacks of cow dung to spread over the fields as fertilizer, and they would then be left, ready for planting once the snows melt in the spring.

However, that way of life is slowly changing. Increasing prosperity and education have meant that many of the young people in these villages travel to the big cities for college. Having tasted a different way of life, too many no longer want to return to the harshness of this remote existence at the edge of civilisation. At the same time, the wealth brought by their cash crops and by tourism has prospered the village and resulted in a building spree. Only now, rather than using the traditional methods and local materials, the homes being built are grand brick and concrete mansions, constructed with cheap Bihari labour, and altering the picturesque feel of the place.

Sheila had described Mane as an ‘Asterix’ village, with narrow stone-walled lanes connecting all the little dwellings. In contrast, one of the saddest things I saw was one area of fields and poplar groves surrounded by a concrete wall topped by a barbed wire fence. A village where once everyone knew and trusted each other now succumbing to greed and suspicion.

How I would love to see some way in which these remote villages could enjoy the benefits of progress – good health care, education, and easing of their harsh existence, without all the negative trappings of greed, mistrust and exploitation that seem to go with it; for the people of these valleys to be able to live in harmony with their environment, tradition and culture, rather than embracing wholesale our Western materialism.

And, as I reflect on the damage caused to this traditional way of life, I have to acknowledge my own complicity in these fractures of our world.