In the Shadow of the Crows, written by David Charles Manners, recounts the true and moving story of Bindra, a woman in the Himalayan foothills who contracts leprosy and is subsequently banned and driven away from her village. It’s also David’s story; a young Englishman, who travels to India after experiencing his own devastating loss, and who subsequently embarks on a journey that will forever change his life.
In the Shadow of Crows masterfully alternates between these two very different tales, as both Bindra and David travel towards their eventual meeting point and the moment that will change each others’ lives forever.
Telling Bindra’s story
It’s impossible to fully explain what In the Shadow of Crows is as a book without, at some point, selling it short.
Is it a travelogue? I suppose in a way that it is. Is it a journey into India and a spellbinding, often hilarious, sometimes unspeakably painful description of two people’s lives? Yes. Is it a lyrical and eloquent account of how loss and unending hope can shape a person? I suppose so. Is it an insider’s look at a disease that, still, to this day continues to ravage and destroy the lives of over 12 million people in India alone? Yes, that too. But, most of all, it is the telling of a friendship and a story that, while at times unbearably painful, remains unexpectedly and unequivocally life-affirming.
So affected was David by Bindra’s story that when she died 5 years ago, he immediately knew he wanted to tell her story. He managed to write the 340-page, richly-detailed book in 3 months. Most surprising of all? He never intended to publish it.
“I just needed to tell Bindra’s story, because it needed to be told,” David explains in the same gracious and soft-spoken voice I clearly heard in my head while reading the book.
We’re sitting in the lobby of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel (how terribly British of him!), where he’s staying while visiting Montreal in support of his book.
“There’s no record that Bindra even existed, David continues, “and I felt this overwhelming need to write this story for her and others just like her.”
David never thought the story would be published. “The first publisher I showed it to, said: ‘Great book, but leprosy is a downer.’ He wanted me to reduce Bindra’s story to two chapters.”
Thankfully, David found Reportage Press, an ethical publishing house that specializes in books set in foreign countries and the rest was history.
A punishment from God
According to the medical dictionary, Leprosy or Hansen's disease, is a chronic disease of the peripheral nerves and mucosa of the upper respiratory tract; skin lesions are the primary external sign. Left untreated, leprosy can be progressive, causing permanent damage to the skin, nerves, limbs and eyes.” As terrible as the disease’s description sounds, it pales compared to its reality. Leprosy is a hard disease to look upon. Those left untreated are afflicted with open, oozing sores on their hands, feet, and face, which unavoidably become infected if left untreated.
The tragedy in this is that leprosy can be easily controlled with medication and the hard-to-gaze-upon symptoms can be drastically reduced, but because of the terrible stigma attached to the disease, people are reluctant to get help.
In India, people consider leprosy as divine punishment for having killed either a cow or a priest in a past life. Lest we pride ourselves in being more civilized and advanced in our thinking, Manners himself has heard Catholic ministries preaching that leprosy is God’s curse for rape or incest; or a punishment for a moral lapse. To understand the absurdity of laying the blame of a disease with the patient, one simply has to ponder the possibility that a child afflicted with cancer somehow did something to deserve it.
But taboos, stigma and superstitions run deep and it’s hard to explain to those hindered by lack of education and faced with a disease that is physically repulsive to the eye, to change their ways. In the meantime, people like Bindra, through no fault of their own, are banished to a life of no value, no joy, and no compassion.
Breaking down walls and building some, as well
Since writing the book, David co-founded, Sarva; a non-profit charity organization that provides medical care, education, and human contact for socially excluded individuals and communities on the Indian subcontinent. But that’s just a dry definition.
The meaning of what Sarva does cannot be explained in words. One has to listen to David explain it himself; watch his face light up as he recounts how he goes into the colonies and gesture by gesture, step by step, makes a tangible difference in these people’s lives. How passionate he gets when he talks about a small leper colony comprised of 50 adults and their children that held a meeting and decided that what they most needed was a cement wall erected so they could grow their own vegetables (and have them protected from wild animals), instead of being reduced to begging for food. Within a year they were completely self-sufficient and even grew enough food to sell some for money. A simple cement wall had changed their lives.
“The problem with many well-meaning charities is that they enter a country and assume that they know what is needed,” explains David. “We as a charity never assume that we have the answers; we ask them what they need. They’re the ones who know how best to improve their situation.”
David describes how he sees the changes in them, how hopelessness transforms into hope, and it’s easy to see why India has such a hold on him and why he’s been returning there for the past 20+ years of his life.
“People think that it must be so depressing in these colonies, but I have to tell you… I’ve never laughed so much in my life. There’s something terribly uplifting and optimistic about their approach to life, and Bindra is so representative of so many people I’ve met there who suffer so deeply and yet still manage to maintain a generosity of spirit that perhaps would be unthinkable to us Westerners.”
"There’s something terribly uplifting and optimistic about their approach to life, and Bindra is so representative of so many people I’ve met there who suffer so deeply and yet still manage to maintain a generosity of spirit that perhaps would be unthinkable to us Westerners.” -
From despair to determination
“It was the permanent presence of death, exposed here as an inevitable, even essential reality of life, that had brought me to Varanasi. I had felt compelled to confront this certain end, that I might better comprehend the loss of those lives that had been integral to my own. […] Instead, I had witnessed an acquiescence to man’s inexorable end that had brought me unexpected comfort. In facing the inborn dread of death, I had found nothing left to fear. To my surprise, on these river ghats it had not been despair that had been revealed, but rather an affirmation that the vast ocean of life demanded more than just the dipping of a trepidatious toe.”
As a book In the Shadows of Crows is a spellbinding and beautifully-written story about India and its people, while still being unflinchingly honest about the country’s extreme inhumanity towards its poor and sick.
But the book is more than just a good ‘read’ (although, that it is!); by associating itself with Sarva, Manners has made the decision to go from observer to doer. Part of the proceeds from the book goes directly to support an organization that is doing incredible work for people who desperately need our help. While some Western media has been reluctant to cover their story (leprosy, after all, is a non-story in North America, since human nature dictates that most people are mostly interested in what directly affects them), the response, Manners tells us, has been astonishing.
Online donations have been pouring in to Sarva (www.sarva.org,uk) and readers around the world, moved by Manner’s extraordinary book, have been compelled to help. One of Sarva’s successes has been to place girls previously denied access to state education because of their leprosy background, some of whose parents survive by begging, to train as nurses and midwives in medical schools.
In the Shadows of the Crows teaches us that there’s hope in the horror of daily life. There’s affirmation of good, in the ghastly. Life is both better and worse than we ever imagined it to be and Manners is an inspirational, thoughtful, and compassionate writer, softly reminding us all of our common humanity and whispering to us that our life’s purpose should be to take care of one another.
No matter our circumstances, we all live our lives in the shadow of death, but it’s the leaning into the light that makes the brief time we spend on earth hold any meaning at all.
In the Shadows of Crows: Two Journeys through India; One remarkable friendship (published by Reportage Press) is available in bookstores across Canada. You can also order it online: www.reportagepress.com. For more information on Sarva and how you can help, go to www.sarva.org.uk
For more on David Charles Manners : www.davidcharlesmanners.com
