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It is not enough to cry out, not sufficient to lay bare your woes and catalogue your needs; people have only to close their eyes and their ears, you cannot force them to see and to hear—or to answer your cries if they cannot and will not.

Two events in Chapter 21 lead Rukmani to continue her reflection on crying out for help: the death of Old Granny and setbacks in the hospital construction. Rukmani is devastated when Old Granny dies on the path to the well, starved and alone. She feels culpable, partly because she stopped selling her vegetables to Old Granny to earn her livelihood and partly because she accepted a rupee from her at Sacrabani’s birth. Bitterly, she observes that the villagers provide the last decencies for Old Granny once she is beyond asking for further assistance from them. Rukmani feels that the villagers, herself included, closed their eyes and ears to Old Granny’s plight though she lived within sight and sound of them. She speculates that Old Granny might have been saved by the hospital had it been finished, but Nathan points out that a hospital is not a soup kitchen, and even the tireless Kenny understands that the hospital will not be able to serve all those who need help. Although Rukmani is amazed that strangers do often give to the needy in her village and in soup kitchens elsewhere, in this passage she laments the extent of the need and the ease with which it can be ignored. She realizes that help requires two-way communication, dependent in part on the needy asking for help, but equally dependent upon a receptive humanity to answer those needs.

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