Jaudis

Over the month that I've spent at Nabo Jibon, I've really tried to build relationships with the men in the TB ward. It has been hard because of the language barrier, and we've spent a lot of time just confusing each other without being able to communicate anything. Still, I've really enjoyed my time with them, and they always seem happy to see me. Jaudis is one of the first men I got to know in the ward. On my second day there he taught me to count in Hindi, his mother tongue. He was the man that once invited me to stay and eat lunch with him. He was always glad to see me and was so patient with me whenever we were struggling to communicate.

Last week (I don't remember which day) he was very excited to see me. He said something I didn't understand, while pointing out the window. Then he handed me a piece of paper. I looked at it and discovered that it was a dismissal from Nabo Jibon. He had recovered from his TB. This was even more amazing to me because he had been there a long time and was one of the men with a resistant strain of TB. He had also been there quite a while. I don't know exactly how long, only that Mother Teresa had actually brought him there (assuming I understood him correctly when he was trying to tell me that). It turned out that they were still waiting on a blood test before releasing him, but that all signs pointed to him being healthy.

Today when I walked into the ward, I looked around. There was another man in his bed. One of the other patients said "Jaudis," then motioned with his hand to indicate that he wasn't there anymore. I inquired a bit more and found out that he had left yesterday (Sunday). It leaves me feeling very bittersweet. I'm so glad that he's healed and able to rejoin his family in another city. Last week, he had been talking a lot about his family, so I know he was very excited to see them again. I can't say that I would want anything other than this to happen. Still, I am going to miss him. I will miss seeing him every day. I will miss trying to talk with him in Bengali, the closest thing we had to a language in common (Hindi is his mother tongue). I will even miss the times when he would try to convince me that I should give up on Bengali and try to learn Hindi instead because it is much more common throughout India as a whole.

You'll never read this Jaudis, and even if you did, you wouldn't understand it, but I'm going to write it anyway. Thank you for the love you showed me during the month of life that we shared. In spite of not understanding most of what you said, I was blessed to be your friend and I will miss you. God bless you!