Asha told me about her father dying in India:

“My father was killed in a car accident. A truck ran into his car and ripped off the top. There are no driving laws in India. The truck driver ran away. My father had his head split on one side and his arm cut mostly off and other people in the car flew out on the road. Everybody just drive around and look or not, but nobody call for the police because they will harass whoever call. They will think you cause the accident or something.

They sat for 2 hours. Finally, someone who knew the car, a driver for another man, recognize the number on the plate and came to tell my brother that my father was in an accident. My brother went with his friends and found my father and lifted him and carried him to the hospital in a car.

At the hospital a man was sitting on a pile of stretchers smoking. My brother said, ‘Can I use one of these stretchers?’ The man ignore him. My brother, who is a big man over six feet, put down my father and lift the man off of the stretcher and put him down. They carry my father into the hospital on a stretcher. He asked a doctor to look at my father. The doctor say, “ He is dead. I do not need to look at him.” My brother grab the doctor by the shirt and say look at him. He was not going to even check to see.

Then they say we have to do an autopsy. That is against our faith, but the doctor insist. But, my brother talk to the hospital administrator, who is a friend of my father. He comes down, and everybody say OK in the refrigerator and keep him 3 days and then send him home.”

Asha told me about her husband’s death in America:

“He was sick in the hospital in San Francisco, and I took time off to stay with him. Then they tell me that they are going to take him off my benefits, so I have to go back to work. So I work till 4 and drive to San Francisco 3 1/2 hours and then back home and take a shower and go back to work. So they move him back to Yuba City and finally he shot himself.”