Tara had an amazing experience, I am sure the first of many like it.
Some background....
There is a woman here named Pat. She came here in the late 1970s with her husband to do work at ICRISAT. She never left. She has been in Hyderabad for the last 30 years. She and her husband are/were exceptionally big-hearted people. I say "are/were" because he passed away a few months back.
While she has been here, Ms. Pat has created a health outreach to the rural poor of Andhra Pradesh. Her group provides medical care for those who don't have the access or the means to get the attention that they need. It is The Institute for Rural Health Studies. Exceptional work.
Well, how does this connect to Tara? Well, she has started to participate. There is an arm of this health outreach that goes to the local bus station and sees who may have come to Hyderabad for medical care. Apparently, there is a daily influx of people who spend their last ruppee to get to Hyderabad from the countryside. And when they get here they have no idea what to do, as the big city seizes up the cognition of those who come from small villages. As a result, there are sick and stunned people just sitting in the Hyderabad bus station.
The rural health group finds the people and gets them to the appropriate hospital. Tara provided the car for seven sick Indians to get to the hospital one day last week.
While she was at the hospital, she encountered two girls who are conjoined twins. The tops of their heads are attached. They had been abandoned and are being raised in the hospital.
When I came home, Tara was exceptionally lit up by the day's events. She had hit on something that really resonated with her. She will almost certainly do more of it. She has already planned what to bring back to the twins in the way of toys.
I mention this not as a way of bragging about what she has done. In some way, it has me a bit ashamed, actually. I am a bit squeamish around medical anomalies and am a little freaked out by seeing pictures of conjoined twins, much less being in a room with them. I count these as shortcomings in myself.
But my love is an exceptional woman. If you know her, you already know that. It has served to remind me that she is inherently made of a different material than most of us.
It also reminds me that grace is disturbing, even shocking, in its pure form.
