Make injustice less painful
Selfless traffic volunteer Dorris Francis is a symbol of hope in times of despair. Society needs to recognise such heroes among us
God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers.’ This verse from the Bible rings cent per cent true in the case of Dorris Francis. Perhaps you haven’t heard of her. Those born in average families and those who stand on the lowest rung of the economic ladder often fail to catch people’s eye. Dorris left Punjab and reached Delhi along with her brother and sister at the age of nine. She began making a living as a domestic help. Around this time she got married with Victor Francis. They built a home in the Khoda neighbourhood near the Delhi-Ghaziabad border and this is where she gave birth to three children. If life hadn’t taken a tragic turn for Dorris, her story, like 99.9 per cent people in the world, would have ended in just these words: they were born, lived and passed away.
One fine evening in 2008, Dorris was returning home with her husband Victor and daughter Nikki. Near the Khoda traffic crossing, a car rammed into their auto-rickshaw. The couple was injured and their daughter’s lungs badly damaged. After nine months of agony and expensive treatment, Nikki didn’t survive.
Such tragedies often leave people broken but Dorris decided that she wouldn’t let what had happened to her happen to others. She decided to make the management of traffic and saving people’s lives her mission. Every morning at 7 am, she would station herself at the Khoda traffic crossing and manage traffic for the next four hours. Initially the drivers didn’t listen to her and even the police wondered what her motive was. But Dorris wasn’t fazed. Gradually, passersby began respecting her. Maintaining this daily drill wasn’t easy for her. Dorris comes from a socio-economic section where people have to dig a well every day to meet their needs. But I salute her indomitable spirit. She faced a number of problems owing to vehicular pollution. She got a liver infection and her blood pressure shot up beyond acceptable limits, but she was determined not to give up on her mission.
If someone enquired, she said she would keep saving lives till her last breath. I can’t silently watch children getting orphaned, women getting widowed or mothers losing their children, she retorted.
On top of this, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Just the mention of cancer is enough for the poor to feel their life has ended. But Dorris was not one to be dissuaded. She was standing at the Khoda crossing with her stick which she used to direct traffic, till November 20 last month. When her health deteriorated, she was admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on November 21. She could not spend more than 10 days there because she needed a total sum of anywhere between ₹2,000 and ₹3,000 every day for treatment. The sole breadwinner in her family, her son, drives an autorickshaw. Her husband is a diabetes patient who is unable to make a living now. Her daughter works as a security guard but hasn’t got her salary for the last few months. She sold her motorcycle to pay for her mother’s treatment. The medical expenses were so exorbitant that they couldn’t have afforded treatment even if the family sold itself.
Dorris’ dejected family members got her discharged from AIIMS on November 30. At the time these lines were being written, she was getting treatment at a private hospital in Vaishali that has decided to support Dorris. A few people have come forward to help her after reading newspaper reports. And the PMO has promised ₹3 lakh for her treatment. Ultimately, the society, to whom she dedicated eight years of her life, is waking up to Dorris’ plight.
Delhi isn’t just the national capital but also the capital of those who die unsung. Thousands of people who come to the city every day to earn a livelihood end up losing their lives.
The question is, why can’t institutions such as AIIMS treat the economically underprivileged? AIIMS is an autonomous body. Organisations such as these have certain limitations but also have certain special rights. Nobody expects private hospitals to do it, but if organisations like AIIMS don’t help the underprivileged, how can India live up to its reputation as a welfare state?
One hopes that Dorris Francis gets comprehensive treatment and gets freedom from physical agony. People like her are like lamps shining on a hill. They might not take away all the darkness but they do provide hope to those fighting against it. We can, therefore, confidently conclude that the country’s population of downtrodden often throws up beacons of hope. Acid attack victim Lakshmi and transgender rights activist Lakshmi Narayan Tripathi are living examples of this.
Lakshmi and Lakshmi Narayan Tripathi proved to be luckier than Dorris. Their fame spread across the world and they were felicitated on international platforms. Paving the way for victims like them, these people are living leading more honourable lives than before.
One wishes people like Dorris, who are fighting for human dignity, could get similar recognition.
Even then, the injustice in the world won’t go away, but facing it would be slightly less painful.