Next to the Skin

Yesterday Krista and I boarded a bus at 7 am and were driven an hour outside of the city to a village along  the tracks of the local train. We had signed up to visit Titagar, the leper's colony established by the missionaries of charity.

I have never seen a person who wore this disease on their body-in my limited knowledge it must be one of the most tragic and disfiguring. As I understand, medical professionals are still unsure of how the disease is spread. I read in "Shantaram", the book I keep picking up and putting down, that in one of the Indian dialects the word for this disease translates to "the living dead," a term we would associate with zombies in a horror film. Truly, it is horrific. The human body decays and the human soul inside becomes trapped in an ever-constricting cage. You lose sensation in your limbs, you lose soft tissue, you lose digits and then limbs, your eyes scar white until you lose your vision, you lose your family, your community, you lose, you lose, you lose.....Leprosy is treatable. Unfortunately, as in most cases at Titagar, help came too late and their bodies had already begun to revolt. Though perhaps the deterioration was halted or at the very least slowed, many were without hands or feet or sight.

The community as a whole is contained and self-sustaining. There is a ward for men, one for women, for children and family apartments all on site. There is a school for the children and a small chapel. The most amazing and impressive thing there was the weavers factory. All the sheets, blankets and clothes Krista and I have washed in the laundrey line at Prem Dan, all the textiles  for every center were hand woven on the looms of Titagar. Even the famous blue and white saris of the sisters of charity are produced by seventy five leprosy patients at the colony. The residents who are able to work sit at stations against the walls of a long, narrow building. The process is complicated, the patterns are intricate, the work is repetitive and exhausting- apparently one elderly man has been in charge for years, he accounts for every thread of the tens of thousands, he keeps up maintenace on every primitive loom and his work is flawless.

The members of this society have the use of a huge, lavish garden of vegetables and flowers which is well kept and planted not only out of necessity but also for beauty.  Goats and hogs are kept on site and produce milk and meat. The buildings themselves are stucco and painted in the soft, clean, cool tones of a hospital in the early 1900's. The property is surrounded by  horizontal strings of barbed wire stacked about 12 feet high. The grounds behind the property have been sectioned off in a giant quilt of crops like mustard and rice. It is one of the most beautiful places we have seen since we have been in the city, and life inside those walls must be far more calm and pleasant than life outside them.

It was good to walk through and be confronted with something I was admittedly nervous to experience. To look into deformed faces and see beyond the disease to the person who smiled and greeted us kindly with "Namaste, good morning."  It has also been on my mind that Mother Teresa chose to have the garments she wore produced here, with these hands that carry the title "unclean", by people who have been cast out of society for thousands of years. The most recognizable symbol, the "flag" of Mother Teresa's work was created by the gnarled hands of the leper. In a sense, she put on that disease every day and wore it right next to the skin.

Again, I am gaining a better sense each day for what bravery looks like. A month before the possibility of this trip was even realized, a friend asked me what I would change about myself if I could. "I wish I were more brave", I had answered without the slightest idea of where to begin. I feel like I have an idea, at least, of where it begins.

 Thankful again today for the experience of this place.


-Ev