I'm a Master in India

Chapter 246: Black Earth, White Bones

“Black earth! Black earth!”

“Heave ho! Heave ho!”

Crunch, the pickaxe struck the ground hard, bringing up a large chunk of dirt.

“White bones! White bones!”

“Heave ho! Heave ho!”

The workers chanted as the pit was dug deeper and deeper.

“Heavy black earth, dense white bones!”

“Bones ground to dust, blood and sweat dried up!”

A struggling burlap sack was lifted up, and the workers gathered at the foot of the mountain automatically made way.

Ratan waved his hand, and the sack was thrown into the bottom of the pit.

“Go down the well, don’t look back, a way out comes from the pile of stones!”

“Black earth, red sweat, white bones, the fate of the poor!”

Shovel after shovel of dirt fell onto the sack like rain.

The dense crowd of workers around watched silently, expressionless.

“Black earth! Black earth! White bones! White bones! This legacy will never fade!”

The land was filled in, looking as unremarkable as it had before the digging.

“Traitors are unforgivable!” Ratan declared loudly, standing in front of the crowd.

“Sur Cement Factory treats every worker mercifully. You will receive your wages without a single paise being deducted. You have clean fragrant rice to eat and won’t be whipped. Your families are allowed to live in the dormitories and won’t be left homeless. This is the Sur family’s mercy, but mercy does not extend to traitors!”

“Long live Sur!” Muna shouted, raising his arm.

“Long live Sur!” Dark-skinned arms were raised, like rusted pickaxes stabbing towards the sky.

“This year, Sur Cement Factory will also build a clinic specifically for you and your families!” Ratan announced another piece of good news.

“Long live Sur!” Enthusiastic cheers surged like a tide.

In a barren place like Uttar Pradesh, having a clinic is truly difficult.

If rural people in the countryside get sick, they just get sick; their lives won't change at all.

There are no doctors, no medicine, and patients continue working in the fields as usual.

They don't care themselves, their families don't care, and the government cares even less.

With no resources, the average life expectancy in this land usually doesn't exceed forty years.

When critically ill, they would vomit blood at home, and after dying, they would be carried to the Ganges River for cremation, allowing stray dogs to lick the unburnt remains.

The crowd gradually dispersed, the fresh earth went unnoticed, and the land returned to silence.

Ron sighed, the air here was no longer fresh; he smelled the stench of decay, staleness, and decline.

Savagery is the main theme of this land; some scenes still make him uncomfortable even now, but the order here has its own operating logic.

Ron did not intervene; he was trying hard to adapt to all of this.

“Master, are you really going to build a clinic?” Muna couldn't help but ask on the way back.

“Of course, the number of workers has already exceeded a thousand; it’s very necessary to have a clinic.”

“Where will the doctors come from?”

“I will hire them from outside.”

“Will he stay in the clinic all the time?”

“If the doctor isn’t in the clinic, where would he go?” Ron asked curiously.

“Most doctors in the countryside aren't in the hospital; they go out on rounds.”

“Rounds?”

“Yes, Master, come with me.”

Muna took Ron to the wasteland near Karna Village and pointed at some stones for him to see.

“There are no hospitals in the nearby villages, only three foundation stones.”

“Foundation stones?”

“Yes, three foundation stones for hospitals. Because the government here has changed three times, and before each election, politicians promised to build hospitals, so there are three extra stones.”

Muna recalled the memory of his father falling ill; he was very sick and started vomiting blood.

He and his older brother Raja quickly rowed him to the hospital; there was only a proper hospital on the other side of the Ganges River.

They kept using river water to rinse their father's mouth, but the water was too dirty, and he ended up vomiting blood even more severely.

There was a rickshaw puller on the other side of the river who recognized Muna's father, so he took the three of them to the public hospital for free.

Three black goats were lying on the steps of the mottled, faded white hospital building; the foul smell of goat dung blew in waves from the open door.

It was rare to see an intact pane of glass on the windows; a cat stared directly at them from behind a broken window.

A sign hung on the door: Rosiapuji Free Hospital, personally inaugurated by a great Socialist Party member, proving that this contemporary sage kept his word.

Muna and Raja carried their father into the hospital; there were goat droppings everywhere on the ground, like black stars from the sky.

They walked into the hospital, stepping on goat droppings; there was no sign of a doctor inside. The two of them slipped the young man looking after the ward ten rupees, and he told them the doctor might come in the evening.

The doors to all the wards were wide open, and the metal springs on the beds were exposed.

As soon as they entered, someone called out.

“Don’t lie on the ground; the cat at the door has tasted blood, it’s not safe.”

Two herdsmen spread out a newspaper on the ground and sat down; one of them had a deep, long wound on his leg.

He motioned for Muna and the others to sit on the newspaper beside him. Muna and Raja moved their father onto the newspaper and then just waited there.

After a while, two little girls with yellowish eyes came in and sat behind them.

“Jaundice! She gave it to me.”

“No way! You gave it to me, we’re all going to die!”

Another old man with cotton gauze over his eyes came in and sat behind the little girls.

The herdsman spread out a few more newspapers on the ground, and their group grew larger: those with bad eyes, bleeding wounds, and unstoppable vomiting of blood.

“Uncle, why isn’t there a doctor at this hospital?” Muna asked, “There’s only this one hospital on both sides of the river.”

“Here’s the thing,” the older herdsman said, “There's a government medical officer specifically in charge of checking if doctors come to such rural hospitals for rounds.”

“As long as there is a vacancy in the medical officer position, that great Socialist Party member will inform all the famous doctors and then publicly auction the position. The current price to fill a vacancy is four hundred thousand rupees!”

“That much money!” Muna exclaimed, mouth wide open.

“What’s that? You can make big money in public institutions! For example, let’s say I’m a doctor, I would borrow money everywhere to raise funds, respectfully deliver it to the Socialist Party member, and even perform the foot-touching ritual for him.”

“Then, he arranges a job for me. As long as I swear by the Quran and the constitution, I step into the national hospital, sit in my office, and comfortably prop my legs up on the desk.”

As the herdsman spoke, he lifted his leg and placed it on his imaginary desk. “Next, I call the junior doctors under my supervision to my office. I take out the official roster and shout loudly, ‘Dr. Vijay Sharma!’”

The herdsman pointed at Muna, so Muna had to play the role of the doctor.

“Present! Mr.!” Muna saluted.

The herdsman held out his hand to Muna, “Now, you, Dr. Vijay Sharma! You have to hand over one-third of your salary to me. Good boy, in return, I give you this.”

He put a tick mark on the imaginary roster. “The rest of the salary is yours, and besides, you can work part-time at private hospitals.”

“Don’t worry about those rural hospitals, because this roster will record that you’ve been there, that you’ve cured that old man’s injured leg, and that you’ve cured that little girl’s jaundice.”

“Ah!” The patients sighed.

Even the young men looking after the wards gathered around, listening and nodding in agreement.

Stories of corruption are the most popular, aren’t they?

Raja fed his father some food, but he immediately vomited it up mixed with blood.

His dark, emaciated body began to convulse, and then he started vomiting large amounts of blood.

The little girl with yellowish eyes was so scared she burst into tears, and the other patients quickly stepped back a few paces from Muna's father.

“He has tuberculosis, doesn’t he?” the herdsman from earlier said, patting his injured leg to shoo away the flies buzzing on it.

“We don’t know if he does, Mr., he’s been coughing for a while, but we don’t know what illness he has,” Muna replied.

“Oh, it’s tuberculosis. I’ve seen rickshaw pullers with this illness before. The work they do is too tiring, it wears down their bodies. Uh, maybe the doctor will come tonight.”

The doctor didn’t come, nor did he come the next day.

Muna guessed the government roster must have recorded it like this: “6:00 AM, the tuberculosis patient has been completely cured.”

The young man looking after the ward said Muna’s father’s blood was contagious and insisted they clean the ward before moving the father’s body.

As Muna and Raja worked hard to wipe away the bloodstains on the ground, the cat walked in, sniffed around, and was then chased away.

A few days later, their father was cremated in the same place as their mother, also because of vomiting blood.

“If only Father had met Master earlier,” Muna sighed.

“What?” Ron didn’t hear clearly.

“Master, you are the best doctor in the world.”

“I’m still far from it.”

“Here you are, always will be.”

“Muna.” Ron kicked the stones with his foot.

“Master?”

“There will be a hospital here someday.”

Muna remained silent, then slowly nodded after a long time.

“Let’s go, let’s go back, things are just beginning.”

According to the information Gudu provided, Sur Cement Factory has been frequently shut down by inspectors recently, and it is indeed the Tripathy family causing trouble behind the scenes.

Gudu studied engineering, so Sur Cement Factory naturally adopted the principle of hiring locally.

He was about to graduate and happened to be favored by Gaur, so he was hired as an intern.

He is responsible for the daily inspection of the entire production line and knows exactly which parts have flaws.

That’s why those inspectors could hit the nail on the head and find fault with the cement factory every time.

As for why the Tripathy family is doing this, it’s nothing more than revenge or covetousness.

The two families already had conflicts, and the Tripathy family is still the local boss of Mirzapur, so the other party has every reason to do this.

Whether Yadav knew about this matter or participated in it, Ron doesn’t know.

That’s not the current focus; revenge is.

The Sur family has been tossed around repeatedly, even targeted. If they don’t return the favor, how can that be?

Ron is very fair in his actions; whatever the other party gives, he returns.

The main principle is an eye for an eye.