AMAZING GRACE HOW SWEET THE SOUND THAT SAVED A WRETCH LIKE ME I ONCE WAS BLIND BUT NOW I SEE WAS LOST BUT NOW I'M FOUND

His name is J. Joy Chakma. I first met him on January 28, 2012. I was conducting a medical clinic in Devyan Town in the extremely poor area of the Chakma Indians in the New Frontier region of Arunachal Pradesh.

His father brought him to me. He ask me if there was anything I could do to help his boy of 16 to see again. I examined his eyes. The left one was hopelessly scarred and destroyed by an accident years erlier. His right eye held blood within the cornea and an ulcer had formed over the eye. He could see light but only if I placed my pen light right up to the eye and then only from a limited angle. I told the boy and the father that I could do nothing for him but would take them to see an opthamalogist within a couple of weeks.
Joy Chakma was the only child left to this poor father. Another son had died earlier with malaria. Almost all the elderly people of India rely solely on their children to care for them in their old age. With no retirement system or social security the children must care for the aging parents. Without a caring adult child, the aging parents will have a poor, precarious and sad ending to their lives on earth.

October 2, 2009,
Tired of a long, hot drive from the jungle area of Jagon where I am constructing a children’s home I arrive in a snarling traffic jam on the outskirts of the city of Dibrugarh. In the slowness of my rented jeep I noticed a woman lying prostrate on the busy sidewalk cluttered with trash, filth and always people.