The Big Sad Story
The world is full of sad stories.
Dust-covered skeletons crawling through another drought…boats packed with refugees staring at storm clouds….shell-shocked children surrounded by rubble. We see them all the time and usually, they are just extras in The Big Sad Story of life.
Usually, we can live as if all the pain and despair and suffering in the world is far away, a fiction that is terrible but not personal; no more urgent than a sad movie. Because really, what can you do? Maybe you say a prayer or you shake your head or you lament the random unfairness of life. And then…what? You move on. You focus on something else. You forget about The Big Sad Story until it shows up again.
What I’ve learned from living with orphaned children for the past five years is this: All it takes to care about someone is to actually meet them, not as a statistic or as a spectacle, but as a person. No one cares about a billion people living in poverty. But one person? Now that’s a story we can actually do something about.
This is Venmathi. When this picture was taken, she was maybe 8 years old. She lived in a small village in southeast India with her parents and her younger sister Kanchana. When I look at her in this photograph, she seems filled with potential, her eyes clear and blazing with the same intensity my own daughter’s eyes had at her age. Her family is poor, but I can imagine a future filled with hope for this girl. What will she become? What impact will she have? Venmathi means “a pure soul” in Tamil and that’s what she looks like to me.
Sadly, I’ll never get the chance to meet her.
Venmathi appears in the first ten minutes of the film Blood Brother, a documentary chronicling the life of Rocky Braat who left his home in America to serve AIDS orphans in India. As the movie begins, Venmathi has fallen ill and her parents are keeping her at a local temple, praying for the Goddess Mother to heal her. When the Goddess is slow to act and Venmathi’s condition worsens, Rocky convinces her father to let the local hospital have a try.
In desperation, the three of them hop on Rocky’s motorcycle and race into the night. But on the way, stuck at a train crossing, despite Rocky’s own prayers to God, Venmathi dies in her father’s arms.
Rocky, Venmathi and her father waiting at the crossing, out of time.
Venmathi gone far too soon.
Venmathi’s mother when she heard the news.
This little girl and her brief tragic piece of The Big Sad Story sticks with me. I can’t shake her. It’s not because of her beautiful face. It’s because she died right in front of me as I stood there watching her through the camera lens, waiting for the train to come. I was there at her burial. I eavesdropped on her parent’s grief. It doesn’t get more intimate than that.
For me, the Big Sad Story disappears when we meet the individuals that make it up. Then, it’s not difficult to imagine I am Rocky, racing against time on my motorcycle, desperate to save the little girl I can feel burning with fever behind me. Or that I am Venmathi’s father on the back of the bike, clutching my dying girl, praying I’m not too late.
Ever since I saw this movie, I’ve followed Rocky on Facebook and today, I saw he’s trying to raise a little money for Venmathi’s family. Their house is a shell and needs all kinds of finish work; tiles, doors, windows, beds, refrigerator, everything. Rocky has raised about $1000 and estimates he needs another $3500.
So I’m getting involved. Maybe you’d like to as well. (Click HERE or the button below if so.) If you’ve seen Blood Brother, you are a part of this story already. You were there too, watching it all happen, right beside me.
And though we couldn’t do anything to help her then, maybe we can do a little something now.
For all donations, put “FOR VENMATHI” in the comments section so they know what it’s for.
Note: All images are screen captures from the powerful film Blood Brother.
If you haven’t seen it, this link will take you there.
