Daniel and Faith are devoted church members, very prominent in the local church activities. Daniel is a retired journalist and Faith, a retired school teacher with many text books for children to her credit. They are cheerful and gracious hosts and are very popular in their neigbourhood and among the members of their parish.
They came into my life through a classmate in school and stayed on as my friends. We hardly meet but come December and a few telephone calls will be exchanged between them, their two daughters and grand children on one side and me fielding all of them on the other side. I consider them to be very good friends and I suspect that they reciprocate the affection that I have for all of them.
They have two daughters Sabrina and Audrey. Those of my vintage and older will see that the former is the screen name for the latter in that famous movie. Daniel was besotted with Hepburn and Faith indulged him by allowing these two names for these girls.
Sabrina had a normal and placid childhood, obtained her Masters Degree in English Literature and is now Professor of English in a college. She is married to a Civil Engineer government official and they have two delightful young sons who the whole family adore.
Audrey the younger is the hero of this story and Daniel and Faith are the Super Heroes for having stood by her through her travails and tribulations that had dogged her till she was well into her thirties.
To start with, Audrey developed infantile polio when she was about a year old and till today does not have the full use of one of her legs. Quite what the family went through to save her life and bring her up to be what she eventually became is this story.
Suffice it to say the Daniel and Faith became my heroes when I saw first hand how they used to handle a very difficult child to carry out her physio therapy and massage sessions besides the various medications to bring about some robustness into the little child. Audrey survived and grew up into a very cheerful and bright student and a champion chess player. Unless one saw her walk, one would not know about her handicap. She eventually studied to become a gynecologist.
Faith’s distant relative Vajram is a highly successful medical practitioner with a very busy nursing home in their home town that specialises in maternity and pediatric care for female patients and children. Vajram’s wife Esther is an educationist and runs a kindergarten school. They are both highly respected citizens of the town and prominent in the local church activities. Their only child Rajkumar was brought up to be a gynecologist so that he could take over from Vajram when the latter’s time for retirement came. Rajkumar was working as a Resident doctor in a Church run hospital in a tribal area deep in the forests and would come home once a month or so.
Vajram and Esther approached Daniel with a proposal that they arrange for Rajkumar and Audrey to get married to each other and after the youngsters met and gave their consent, it was all arranged. I was particularly impressed with Vajram’s family for accepting Audrey’s handicap. I attended the wedding and I can confidently say that I had never before nor since then ever seen a bride as beautiful as Audrey on that day. She was radiant and happy and all of us were very happy to see the perfectly matched couple.
Audrey too decided to join Rajkumar in the tribal hospital and quit her post with the local hospital. From all accounts during the next couple of years or so, the couple were happy in their chosen careers and were looking forward to raising a family of their own.
Then tragedy struck and Rajkumar succumbed to a strange, as yet unidentified infection that he must have acquired in the course of his practice and after a brief illness passed away at the young age of 35. A devastated Audrey decided to stay on among the tribals despite all our pleas for her to move back to civilisation and a new life.
It was at this stage that Vajram decided that some kind of retribution for his son’s death was on order and lodged a complaint with the local police that he suspected his daughter in law of poisoning his son. Considering his standing in the local community, the police took the complaint seriously and arrested Audrey as a suspect in a murder case. Despite much pleading by Daniel and other relatives to withdraw the complaint, a bitter Vajram urged the local police to proceed with the case, which with much reluctance they did under pressure from ‘the top’.
Rajkumar’s body was exhumed and a revised autopsy carried out by the government authorities who decided to ignore the hospital’s original death certificate issued when the death had occurred. The autopsy proved inconclusive and procedural delays ensured that Audrey was in jail for over three months before bail could be obtained for her release.
Daniel’s entire family came together to present a unified front against very powerful local elements in the police and bureaucracy and fought the case to a successful conclusion though it took over two years before a ‘not guilty’ verdict could be obtained. Vajram urged the police for an appeal against the acquittal but the Church officials intervened and persuaded him to let the matter go. He gave up when he saw the Church solidly behind Daniel’s family but was totally remorseless for having caused such pain to an innocent woman. From what I gather from other local sources, he is still bitter and blames Audrey for his son’s death.
Disgusted with what had happened, Audrey decided to opt out of her calling in the South of India and as I write this, has moved to the Middle East to practice there. When I spoke to her last December when she was visiting her parents, I teased her about flings with Arab Sheiks and she vehemently denied any such inclinations and also affirmed that she was through with romance and matrimony and also medical practice in India ever in the future.
Daniel, Faith and I have not lost hope and we shall try to brain wash her again come next month when she will be back in India.
Disclaimer. Names of individuals and institutions have been deliberately changed. Any resemblance to living individuals or institutions is entirely intentional.
What a bizzare story.
Strange legal system that can have someone imprisoned without any evidence of wrong doing.
As to “brain wash her again come next month”: Why? To do what?
U
Ursula recently posted..Butterfly
Legal systems do not seem to matter for powerful people and communities. It is not a peculiar phenomenon in my part of the world. Here is a case that should make you see red – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2473000/Daisy-Coleman-Hundreds-Justice-Daisy-rally.html
Brain wash her into getting over her bitterness and leading what we would want a young smart person like her to do.
I had already read about the Daisy Coleman case. I’m afraid cases like that happen all the time. And in your case it was good that the girl’s family had the influence of the Church to help them about the appeal.
Cheerful Monk recently posted..Sleep Study — Another View
You cannot open a newspaper in India without coming across some misuse of power somewhere or the other CM.
She will have to work through her grief in her own time. She will also have to heal and overcome her bitterness in her own way. It is only natural that those who care for her would try to convince her to put the past behind and move on. However, she alone can decide when she is ready to face the world again on her own terms. I certainly appreciate that family/friends are rallying around her and pray that with their support and love, she will once again see clear skies.
She is seeing clear skies alright Renuka. She is a very cheerful person. She simply does not want to be a Sabrina clone.
What an awful thing to go through to be jailed for murder even as you are grieving. Maybe being away is exactly what she needs.
Secret Agent Woman recently posted..It was everything. But it’s getting better.
This reads like what I’ve seen on TV’s Dateline. Ramana, are these your friends or did you make this up?
Every single one of them exists bar the one that died. I have changed names and have not given any indication of the state but people who know me personally can easily identify all these characters or their counterparts in local communities. What is fiction if not articulation of real life situations by changing names and places? In fact truth is indeed often stranger than fiction.
For work among tribals, here is a link that will take you to a tribal area within my state that you have visited.
http://www.thebetterindia.com/8597/tbi-changemakers-tamarind-tree-how-one-couple-is-changing-a-village-a-community-and-a-tribe/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheBetterIndia+%28The+Better+India%29
I know you don’t LIE. I was teasing you, as you know. Your post would make an excellent Hollywood movie.
I hope that some producer comes across and buys the rights for it!
Poor Audrey! Glad she made it out. I hate that the father-in-law couldn’t get past his grief… It may be quite awhile before she will want to come home. Sometimes a different environment is what you need.
She has got over everything Becky. She just wants to immerse herself in her profession.
In my book this is an example of why young people should have the freedom to choose their own partners in life. I think there has been enough interference in Audrey’s life so far, and she should be allowed to choose her own road to happiness and contentment.
Grannymar recently posted..Sunday one liners ~ 3
Had Audrey wanted to choose her own partner for life, her parents would not have objected. This was a one off. In our country, the girls, even highly educated ones from liberal families still ask their parents to arrange suitable matches. Those alliances have as much of successes or failures as the so called love marriages.
Audrey has been to hell and back, Rummy. She may never recover from the agony she has suffered.
She also may not return to visit if the “brainwashing” continues.
blessings ~ maxi
Maxi recently posted..I’m Proud To Be An American
Spot on Maxi. Any decision should be entirely her own……
That she has. I would not rush to say that she would not return if the brain washing continued. I know that girl. She can take on the likes of her parents and me and leave us panting for breath.
what an amazing story.
she is velvet ~ encasing a backbone of steel.
go audrey! follow your heart.
and i’m sorry. but evil bitterness and a vengeful heart disguised as grief is still evil in my book. boo on his father. what a sad and hateful man.
tammyj recently posted..have you ever?
Oh, she is a grand girl alright. She is quite capable of breaking a few hearts when she wants to.
A presswala and his wife, on my road, parted company around two years ago when the wife refused to return home with the husband to their native village. She kept the press (ironing stand) going and continued to send her children to school. The husband was found dead recently, apparently murdered. The woman was dragged off to jail along with her father, accused by the husband’s relatives of getting him murdered. She’s out right now and back with her kids, although, not being a Hindi speaker, I’m not sure if the charges have been dropped. I don’t even know the woman’s proper name. I hope she’s okay. God help any woman in India whose husband dies. I’ve heard of too many wives blamed for their husband’s deaths.
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And, irrespective of the merits of the case, every unnatural death of a woman in cities now result in the parents of the woman complaining of dowry harassment and the husband and his family undergoing torturous times. We do live in very peculiar times.