Chapter 246 Black Soil and White Bones
"Black soil! Black soil!"
"Hey yo! Hey yo!"
Crack! The pickaxe slammed into the ground, bringing up a large piece of soil.
"Bones! Bones!"
"Hey yo! Hey yo!"
The workers shouted slogans and dug the pit deeper and deeper.
"The black soil is heavy and the white bones are everywhere!"
"Bones crushed, blood and sweat shed!"
A struggling 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, there's a way out among the rocks!"
"Black soil, red sweat, white bones, the life of a poor man!"
Shovels of dirt fell on the sacks like rain.
The workers crowded around were watching quietly with expressionless faces.
"Black soil! Black soil! Bones! Bones! This legacy will never die!"
The land was filled in and looked just as plain as it had been before the excavation.
"Traitors will not be forgiven!" Ratan declared loudly in front of the crowd.
"The Sur Cement Factory treats every worker with kindness. You will be paid without a single paise being deducted. You will eat clean fragrant rice and will not be whipped. Your families are allowed to live in dormitories and do not have to live on the streets. This is the kindness of the Sur family, but kindness will not protect betrayers!"
"Long live Sur!" Muna shouted.
"Long live Sur!" Dark arms were raised, stabbing into the sky like rusty pickaxes.
"This year, the Sur Cement Plant will also build a clinic specifically for you and your families!" Ratan announced another good news.
"Long live Suer!" The enthusiastic cheers surged like a tide.
It is really not easy to have a clinic in a barren place like Uttar Pradesh.
If rural people in the countryside are sick, they are sick, and their days will not be any different.
There were no doctors or medicines, and the patients still had to work in the fields as usual.
They don't care, their families don't care, and the government doesn't care either.
Without these conditions, the average life expectancy in this land usually does not exceed forty years.
When he was terminally ill, he vomited blood at home. After his death, he was carried to the Ganges River for cremation, and the Shar-Pei dogs were left to lick the unburned remains.
The crowd gradually dispersed, no one paid attention to the fresh soil, and the earth fell into silence.
Ron sighed. The air here was no longer fresh. He smelled the stench of decay, staleness, and withering.
Barbarism is the main theme of this land. Some scenes still make him feel uncomfortable, but the order here has its own operating logic.
Ron didn't intervene, he was trying to adapt to it all.
"Master, are you really planning to build a clinic?" Muna couldn't help asking on the way back.
"Of course, with more than a thousand workers, a clinic is essential."
"Where's the doctor?"
“I’ll hire from outside.”
"He's been at the clinic?"
"The doctor is not in the clinic, where should we go?" Luo Enqi asked.
"Most rural doctors are not in hospitals; they are out making rounds."
"Patient rounds?"
"Yes, Master, please follow me."
Muna took Ron to a wasteland near Kana Village and pointed out some stones to him.
“There are no hospitals in the nearby villages, only three foundation stones.”
"Foundation stone?"
"Yes, three hospital foundation stones. Because there have been three governments here, and before every election there are politicians who promise to build a hospital, so there are three more stones."
Muna's memories returned to him when his father was sick, he was very sick and started vomiting blood.
He and his brother Raja hurriedly rowed a boat to take him to the hospital, as there was a regular hospital on the other side of the Ganges.
They kept rinsing their father's mouth with river water, but the water was too dirty and he vomited blood even more.
Across the river, a rickshaw driver recognized Munna's father and took the three of them to a public hospital free of charge.
Three black goats lay on the steps of the mottled and faded white hospital building, and the stench of goat manure blew in through the open door.
There was rarely a piece of intact glass on the window, and a cat was staring at them from behind the broken window.
There was a sign on the gate: Rossiya Puji Free Hospital. The great socialist personally cut the ribbon, which was enough to prove that this modern sage was a man of his word.
Muna and Raja carried their father into the hospital. The ground was covered with sheep eggs, like black stars in the sky.
They walked into the hospital on goat dung, but there was no doctor in sight. They gave the young man in the ward ten rupees, and he told them the doctor might come that evening.
The doors of all the wards were wide open, and the metal springs of the beds were exposed.
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 a newspaper on the ground and sat down. One of them had a deep and long wound on his leg.
He asked Muna and the others to sit on the newspaper beside him. Muna and Raja moved their father onto the newspaper and then waited there.
After a while, two little girls with yellow eyes came in and sat behind them.
"Jaundice! She gave it to me."
"No way! You infected me, and we're all going to die!"
Another old man with his eyes covered with cotton gauze came in and sat behind the little girls.
The herdsman spread a few more newspapers on the ground, and their group grew again: some had poor eyesight, some had bleeding wounds, and some were vomiting blood.
"Uncle, why is there no doctor in this hospital?" Muna asked, "This is the only hospital on either side of the river."
"Well," said the old herder, "there's a government medical officer who's in charge of checking whether doctors are visiting village hospitals like this one.
Whenever the post of Medical Officer becomes vacant, the great socialist informs all the eminent doctors and sells the post at public auction. The going rate for filling a vacancy is four hundred thousand rupees now!"
"So much money!" Muna opened his mouth in surprise.
"What's that? You can make a fortune in the public sector! If I were a doctor, for example, I'd borrow money from everywhere, collect donations, and then present them to the Socialists with all my respect, even touching their feet.
He arranged a job for me. I just had to swear by the Koran and the Constitution and walk into the National Hospital, sit in the office, and rest my legs comfortably on the desk.
The herder said, lifting his feet and placing them on his imaginary desk. "Then I called the junior doctors I supervised into my office. I pulled out the official roster and yelled, 'Dr. Vijay Sharma!'"
The herdsman pointed at Muna, and Muna had to play the role of the doctor.
"Here, sir!" Muna saluted.
The herder held out his hands to Muna. "Now, you, Dr. Vijay Sharma! You have to give me one-third of your salary. Be good, and in return, I'll give you this."
He ticked a box on the imaginary roster, “The rest of the salary is yours, and you can also work part-time at a private hospital.
Never mind the rural hospital, because this roster will record that you have been there, that you have cured the old man’s injured leg, and that you have cured the little girl’s jaundice.”
"Ah!" The patients sighed.
Even the young men guarding the ward came over, listening and nodding in agreement.
Stories about corruption are the most popular, aren't they?
Raja fed his father some food, but he immediately vomited it up with blood.
His dark and thin body began to twitch, and then he started to spit out blood in large mouthfuls.
The little girl with yellow eyes burst into tears of fear, and the other patients quickly stepped back from Muna's father.
"He has tuberculosis, right?" the herdsman said as he patted his injured leg to drive away the flies that were biting it.
"We don't know, sir. He has been coughing for a while, but we don't know what disease he has." Muna replied.
"Oh, it's tuberculosis. I've seen rickshaw pullers with it before. They've been worn out by the work. Well, perhaps the doctor will come tonight."
The doctor didn't come, nor did he come the next day.
The registers of Munachai's government must have recorded something like this: "At six o'clock in the morning, the tuberculosis patient was completely cured."
The young man guarding the ward said that Muna's father's blood was contagious and insisted that they clean the ward before moving his father's body.
As Muna and Raja were busy wiping the blood from the floor, the cat came in, sniffed around, and was chased away.
A few days later, their father was cremated in the same place as their mother, also due to vomiting blood.
"If only father had met the master earlier." Muna sighed.
"What?" Ron didn't hear clearly.
"Master, you are the best doctor in the world."
"I'm still a long way from here."
"Here it is, and always will be."
"Muna." Ron kicked the stones with his feet.
"Owner?"
"There will be a hospital here one day."
Muna was silent for a long time before he slowly nodded.
"Let's go, go back, things have just begun."
From what Guddu had revealed, it seemed that the recent frequent shutdowns of the Sur Cement Plant by inspectors were indeed the work of the Tripathi family.
Gudu studied science and engineering, so the Sur Cement Factory naturally adopted the principle of proximity when recruiting.
He was about to graduate when he was spotted by Gao Er and was hired as an intern.
He is responsible for daily inspections of the entire production line and knows exactly which links have defects.
That's why the inspectors can hit the nail on the head and find fault with the cement factory every time.
As for why the Tripati family did it, it was nothing more than revenge or covetousness.
There had been conflicts between the two families, and the Tripathi family was the local tyrant in Mirzapur, so the other party had every reason to do so.
Ron didn't know whether Yadav knew about this matter or was involved in it.
That's not the point right now, revenge is.
The Suer family was tossed around and around, and even targeted. How could they not reciprocate?
Ron is very fair in his work. He gives back whatever the other party gives him.
The main theme is tit for tat.
(End of this chapter)
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