Under an Indian Sky

Janet Ganguli grew up in England listening to stories about her grandfather who had spent twenty-five years in India during the British Raj. After training as a nurse she journeyed overland to India, eventually making the small village of Titmoh in Bihar (now Jharkhand) her home for ten years. Unfazed by her new world peopled by poor villagers for whom survival was a daily struggle, she set about her task to provide them with basic health care and do what she could to help them improve their lives. She soon realized that this was going to be far from easy, observing close at hand how, besides the vicissitudes of nature, the villagers had to contend with moneylenders, quacks, contractors and callous or rapacious government officials. In Under an Indian Sky we see the portly moneylender waiting to collect sacks of rice from the family even as the malnourished five-year-old Anil lies dying beside him. There is the ‘highly trained’ doctor who refuses to operate on Lilmuni as she fights for her life, because he doubts if a Santhal can afford his fees, and the feisty Budhan, in his sixties, is forced to undergo vasectomy, a botched operation that spells ruin for him. But this unsentimental account is neither a litany of tragedies nor an extended lament and Janet Ganguli does not idealize those she seeks to help.This spare and lucid narrative is, ultimately, a celebration of courage, determination and love.