Outlaw in India by Philip Roy Page B

their babies? That doesn’t make
     any sense.”
    “Girls are more expensive to have in India than boys.”
    “Why?”
    “Because families have to provide a dowry for them when they marry, and that’s
     expensive. And the other thing is that parents expect to be looked after by
     their sons in their old age. So, if a family has only girls, they have to pay
     money for them when they are married, and, when they leave, there’s no one to
     look after the parents. So, they get it coming and going. Our traditions make it
     rather difficult for many families to celebrate the birth of girls. There are
     lots of illegal clinics where people go to find out what sex their baby is
     before it is born. If it is a girl, they abort it.
    “For some who cannot afford such a clinic, they might take matters into their
     own hands after the child is born. It’s terrible of course, and we are trying
     hard to stop it. Like the attitudes you see towards your friend, this sort of
     thing goes very far back in India’s history. To understand any person in India
     today, such as the doctor across the street, you have to imagine all the people
     standing in front of him—his ancestors— and the centuries of tradition and
     thousands of years of history. It’s not simple at all.”
    “That doesn’t make it right.”
    “No. It doesn’t make it right. But it explains where it comes from. To make it
     right is going to take a long time.”
    When the doctor was ready to go home, we woke Radji.Then she
     kindly offered us a drive. It was a little tricky explaining where to drop us
     without telling her about the sub, which I didn’t want to do if I didn’t have
     to. I said we were staying on a boat on the river, which was true, mostly, and I
     convinced her to let us out on the road and not come to the boat, and she
     accepted that, although I think she was curious. I was glad to get everyone
     inside the sub safe and sound, including Seaweed, who dropped out of the sky
     when he saw us come to the river. I fed everyone and we settled down to
     sleep.
    I should have fallen right to sleep, too, because I was so tired. But I
     couldn’t. Something was bugging me. I kept remembering the look on the face of
     the other doctor when he refused to treat Radji. I thought it was a look of
     hatred. It was so ugly. Now, I felt that I hated him . But I didn’t like
     that feeling. It was so complicated! I just couldn’t get over the fact that, had
     the snake been poisonous, he would have let Radji die. Didn’t that go against
     human nature? I lay on my cot and tried to fall asleep but I couldn’t. I needed
     to get out and walk. And so, while everyone was sleeping, I slipped out of bed,
     climbed out of the portal, shut the hatch behind me and climbed up the
     bank.
    I walked along the road that followed the river. The moon was out and I saw it
     reflect off the tops of the trees. I walked, lost in thought, until I realized I
     was standing in front of the doctor’s house. The big iron fence went all around
     his property except for the side open to the river. I peeked through the fence
     and saw his fancy car and boat, and behind that, astatue of
     a woman holding an urn. It looked like a Greek statue. Staring at his house and
     property in the middle of the night, I felt that what was most important to him
     was money. I thought of the other doctor, and I knew that what was most
     important to her was people. They were so different. She had told me to try to
     think of all the generations of people standing in front of this doctor, but all
     I could see was money.
    I went through some bushes beside his property and found my way to the river.
     To the right I saw an old barge, tucked in underneath some overhanging trees,
     just the way the sub was hidden. It looked to me as though the barge hadn’t been
     moved in decades. It was rusted and banged up and looked a hundred years old. So
     much of the machinery in India was ancient. I liked