"Sure!" I said. The children at the orphanage all told me didi (big sister) Zahina had lost so much weight ("she is sooo teeen now") ever since she got married. She refused to tell me why at first. "Don't ask so many ting okei, I am okei. You just come na, for dinner at my new house. I make for you and we can talk den."
I came from a rickety public bus from the Potter's house at the outskirts and I grew worried as I waited for her at a messy junction point I had never been to before, in the middle of nowhere. Minutes later, she appeared with a luminous smile, in that dirty blue-green sweater I first met her in three years ago. We walked up and down a bridge, past a demented fellow collecting trash, down a wide, foul-smelling river filled with hundreds of scary, large speckled hawks, along a street market before we reached a dingy alley. We walked down a dank flight of steps. A sharp turn, and I tried to conceal my shock and heartwrench as I took in what I saw.
I knew she led a simple life. She said she lived with her mother and husband, so in my mind I had envisioned a cosy one-room home, not unlike a modern studio apartment, but perhaps more spartan, simpler. It is not as if I have not seen the Poor. I have been to the villages, visited their homes. My own community medicine project patient who is poor lives in a tiny flat which friends and I visit when we can. It is not like I have not seen their homes.
Then I entered a tiny catacomb in the basement which led to a room smaller than my living room, and that was her entire home. Her mother slept in a wooden bed underneath a sloping ceiling, her husband and her in an adjacent bed next to a wardrobe, packed next to a tiny wooden table with four chairs and a charred stove, with hardly any walking space. The public toilet was outside-there was no sink. She ran up the tiny stairwell to pump water into a basin, after which she squatted down to wash vegetables at the foot of her bed.
It is not like I have not seen the poor. But Zahina was my dearest friend. To think she lived like the other poor people on the street opened my eyes to a world of reality and cruelty in a way I had never seen before. When I saw her home, disbelief and anguish and shock caught me by surprise though they should not have. I understood why she had become "soo teeen".
She had quit her job at the orphanage and moved into a new place after marriage as she could no longer work full-time as a housesister there. Her eighty-year old mother has severe asthma, her husband, Deepak, is a dog-trainer for the army and she found a job working for my missionary friend who runs a social enterprise.
"Are you happy?" I asked. "Yes," she said. Her eyes did not lie.
We had fish ("Oh very good price, this one. My dear Deepak bought from fisherman who went to his office at army camp today. Very good price"), leftover chicken ("from yesterday, you dont mind ya?"), vegetables and black dhal ("your favourite ya?"), cake and milk which she ran out to buy. Then we had grapes which I had brought and helped wash as we squatted together on the rough cement floor.
"Come na, so late, Deepak and I, we walk you back." They talked as if my living quarters were five minutes away. It was freezing cold outside and they would have to walk twice the journey to get back. But they insisted that it was "short time away" and we walked briskly, shivering uder the stars, for forty-five minutes.
It was then that I started to cry. I would never forget that house. I would never forget what she cooked for me. Fried fish, fried chicken, long beans and carrots, and my favourite most-delicious-in-winter-black-dhal. They were tears of heartache, of pain but most of all, of gratitude, for her hospitality, generosity and sacrificial love. I cried all the way back as she finally told me why she had lost so much weight- "no money so no rice haha, but not good to tell others, you know. God knows, that is enough."
She had little, but her joy was full. Out of her poverty, she gave unto me and overflowed with joy.
Because of the swine flu, medical school has been suspended till further notice. In this quietness, I've been taking time to think about what God had and has indeed called me to. I have been warmly welcomed to visit this place for 2 months, and as I sought God, I hear Him whisper that I did not hear his call to the poor wrongly. In this quietness, I found focus, an oasis in the wilderness. I feel unchained from the old idols which used to bind me- material things like clothes, fashion, possessions and lately, the desire for a better roadbike has also lost its hold on me.Sitting on the train steps by Grandpa Zhou lately, he asked me how I had been doing. I said I was fine, and asked if it was wrong to buy better, more expensive things, because of what I had been considering of late. I didn't want to hear it from anyone else.
"Cuo!(wrong in mandarin)" he exclaimed immediately, much to my initial dismay. But he profusely added the disclaimer that he only said it because he was the "scum of society" (I then forbade him to say that), and did not have the wealth nor right to make such decisions. But I wasn't asking if he could afford it. I was asking about the principle. And he was right. Reading Mother Teresa's biography at this time also gives one little excuse.
So in the weekend we went shopping but I could not buy anything.
I let it go. And the freedom of being unchained is incredible, you know. Far greater than any material possession we imagined could ever bring.
There are some things in life only the Poor know. Some riches they have we that we shall never touch, unless we become like them. There are some truths only they know, like the unparalleled joy of giving out of one's poverty.
This is the treasure of the Poor.
" Listen, my dear brothers:
Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world
to be rich in faith and to
inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?
But you have despised the poor. "
-James 2: 5-6
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