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Published: October 2nd 2006
Calf taking shelter from the rain
Just one of the many animals that roam the streets of India. It is the one place we'd be traveling that I had been to before. I was twenty years old, fresh out of teen-hood and ready to see the land of spice and color that I knew so little about. Everything in the country was new and exotic and different to me. The green of the rice fields was the lushest I had ever seen. The monsoons that swept across the fields and villages was thrilling. The clothing and food and music was all so exciting. I was transfixed and inspired by my exposure to such an exotic place.
Recalling my last experience with India, I anticipated writing home to you and describing the scenery in vivid detail. I already knew that the country is a muse. Upon our exit from the airport this time around, the second I stepped out of the doors and breathed in that humid Indian air, ten-year-old memories rushed back to me. I was back! I was excited to embrace my India again!
While India has changed over the past several years, I have changed even more. This fact of life did not cross my mind when I envisioned our time here. It took
Posing in Passing
This man saw my camera and asked for me to take a picture of him, I was happy to oblige! As you can see a few of the background boys were looking for their one moment in time as well! a matter of hours for the reality of India to hit us both. We stayed in Delhi for four days, and by days two and three we were completely shocked into a daze. We barely spoke to each other and walked around in a surreal dream-like state. I could not write because I was unable to make sense of what I was seeing. While India's exoticism is still clearly evident, so is its massive poverty and well…I’ll just say it…its hopelessness.
There is no place on earth like India. Let me tell you a little about the factual side of this country. I normally don't like presenting a nation in such a straightforward manner, but in India's case, I think you might find the numbers quite interesting.
The average life expectancy here is abut 64 years old.
Only 54% of women and 75% of men are literate, keep in mind, however that the country's definition of "literate" is that a person can write and recognize their own name- that's it.
For every 100,000 people there are only 48 doctors and 45 nurses. The percentage of the GDP spent on health is a measly 0.9%.
After South Africa, it
Ladies in Waiting
I don't know why I love this shot so much. I snapped it from my bus window. has the largest number of people infected with HIV, in 2005 there were 5.1 million reported cases. Experts estimate that in the next four years, that number will more than double to 12 million.
India has the highest rate of child laborers in the world with between 80 and 115 million children peddling on the streets, working in the fields, serving as house-keepers and such. Two of the most dangerous jobs that employ child labor are that of firework manufacturing and rolling bidies (small hand-rolled cigarettes). Both jobs entail breathing in dangerous and harmful chemicals.
India's poverty level is one of the highest in the world with 400 million Indians living below the poverty line. About 35% of the population survives on less than one dollar a day.
Pretty incredible figures huh?
Here is the grand finale; India has a population of 1.027 billion people (2001 Census), which places your chances of being born in India as one in six. I still can't really understand the full impact of that figure. When Griff brought up this fact yesterday over dinner, we spent the entire meal discussing how incredibly fortunate we both were to beat those odds. The American wombs
Child Beggars
These were two children in a family of six begger children. The baby is eating a banana we gave them and the shorter girl in standing inside of a metal hoop that she slithers through and contorts her body around in order to win a rupee or two from onlookers. that brought us lives of luxury and health are all the more appreciated.
I must be honest with you; I am still a little culture shocked. I know that people come to India searching for enlightenment and I honestly don't know how you can spend any significant amount of time in this country and NOT find enlightenment of some sort. The blessings that abound from the sheer birthright we hold is enough to make every inconvenience or difficulty that we face in America seem minor.
As I mentioned in the beginning, when I arrived here I found myself unable to write out what I as feeling and thinking. I haven't left this mental place yet. I am still drinking in India and my digestion of the place is yet to be revealed. What I
have been writing down is what I see and hear and can pick up with my physical senses. I offer them to you but make no conclusions…yet.
The air is hot and humid and brings with it odors from every direction. From the east is carried the green scents of trees that live in the cemetery bordering the building I am standing on
Trash Pile
Just one of the many trash piles that litter the street, and yes, that IS a pig in the middle of it all. Her little piglets are also in the mess. the roof of. From the north, incense and spices waft pleasurably by. When the wind changes quickly I can smell urine and dirt from the ally below. My nose seems to welcome me to the truth of India.
I am standing on the rooftop of our eight dollar a night hotel. It's a dump, a total hole, but it's nicer than the others we looked at. Delhi is supposedly the most expensive place to find accommodations in India.
Below me the street is dark. There are no street lights and the road is composed of dirt smashed down to a dustless pancake from the millions of feet that have tread across it. A cow pulls a silent u-turn and a dog nods hello to his animal counterpart. The lights from each shop-front click off as a Hindu song begins its celebrational tones from a speaker at a temple. The skinny shop owner takes out his cot made of sticks and closes his eyes. He is asleep within seconds. Others follow suit and lay to sleep on the dirt road or cement sidewalk. They have no mat or blanket. They lay in the remnants of the day's leftovers. Garbage is
Sleeping on the job
A typical rickshaw scene. strewn everywhere. Between each pile of trash is strewn peels from bananas, wrappers from candies, toilet paper, rotten lettuce heads, and various other filthy items.
One man calls his family to eat. From up here I can see the white rice he is dividing up between his children and spooning vegetable curry sauce atop it. An adolescent boy was taking water from metal pans and pouring them over his sweaty body one minute ago. He is now washing the dishes in the same manner. No soap. No hot water. The gigantic oxen-like cows have curled up in the sidewalk like a domesticated dog. The crickets creek endlessly hosted in their cemetery grasses, and the Hindu holy man keeps singing. A gigantic shadow of a bat flies by a few feet away from my face then into a tree to lord over the crickets below. Lizards scurry over every wall, terrified of being found out.
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Adventures in Delhi… It is 6:08am and we have just boarded the train from the station in Delhi. We are bound for Agra to see the Taj Mahal. On our way out this morning we dropped off our key with the sleepy-eyed men at
the front desk. As we left one of the men ran after us and accused us of not paying for our second night at the hotel, which is logically insensible because you are not allowed to stay another night unless you have paid for the previous one. We were there for four nights in total. We were in a hurry and didn't want to miss our train but they were adamant and showed us their books which listed in pencil, the payments received. Someone had accidentally not recorded our payment (or erased it). There was a small argument, I told the gentleman to call the police. He did not want to do this and we walked out.
Looking back to the second day in Delhi, we were walking by some grates and all of a sudden Griff had cow poop all over his sandals- oozing through his toes and under his foot. We had heard of the scam before, appropriately called the "Poop-On-Shoe Scam". Within a matter of seconds a shoe shiner appeared out of nowhere offering to clean up Griff's foot. Griff was pretty upset, and had you seen the mess all over his shoe, you wouldn't blame him-
there was huge mass of the runny stanky yellow poo. He angrily declined the shoe-shiner's offer and we washed off his foot with some tissue and a bottle of water. Griff obsessed about the remnants of poo on his foot all day and swore he was getting a rash.
Later when we were at the market. Griff was interested in a long-sleeve shirt to ward off the mosquitoes. When the price was too high and he left the shop, the store owner and a sales man literally grabbed both of his arms and tried to force him into the purchase. Griff broke free, trying not to hurt anyone in his state of confusion but the owner continued to follow him. The man was pushing and grabbing and yelling at Griff. Eventually I sorta elbowed the nasty salesman out, hoping that he wouldn't paw a woman the same way he was attacking Griff.
We were in a Taxi in Delhi, at a stoplight and I saw the shadow of a beggar moving alongside the car next to us. "Close your window." I instructed Griff. The light turned green just as our window reaches the top of the frame. The car pulled
Sleeping on the Streets
This man has one leg missing and onother on the way. Leprosy is a huge threat here and scenes like this one are literally every few steps in Delhi and some of the surrounding areas. away as I turned to see the beggar. I was horrified by what I had seen and broke out into a sweat. My stomach filled with acid. "Oh my God. Oh my God!" (and I say this as a call to a higher power, not as an expression.) There is nothing else I can do… A child, perhaps between the age of seven and twelve years old is standing in traffic with his hand out. His head is so gigantic on his skeletal frame, that I can't understand how his neck is supporting his head. He is literally skin pulled tightly over a skeleton. Not skinny. Not thin. He is dead. I don't know how he is standing. Even the photographs of starving children in Africa seem to pale in comparison. This child might have a week left of life.
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As we walk to the train... Some cows are curled up on the cement sidewalk. Others are rummaging through trash ingesting all sorts of plastics and wrappers. A man with a push-cart water-stand looks at us and calls out the infamous, "Yes, Please." as in , "Yes, please come over here and buy something." It is hollered at
us hundreds of times a day. Skinny men with white smudged shirts and tan pants are sleeping in a row on the cement alongside the filthy cows. Humungous piles of yellow and green and brown feces are splattered all over the road. There is no sidewalk so pedestrians, cars, rickshaws, bikes, cows, dogs, donkeys and goats all share the same thoroughfare. Some of the piles of feces have been run over by a rickshaw wheel and are slowly piecing off into water that is running underfoot, under buildings, and across storefront thresholds. A woman in a tattered sari is cooking rice and curry sauce for the rickshaw drivers who will buy it for a few rupees. A motorcycle whizzes by. An auto rickshaw misses my foot by an inch. A big hole has been dug up towards the side of the street where men have been working for the past three days. Within the hole are the electric wires to every store and hotel on the street. The wires are left exposed and covered by a piece of burlap. I am multitasking like never before, dodging traffic that is unending, overstepping giant holes in the street, avoiding piles of poop
from all sorts of mammals. The air is hot and humid as always and we are the center of attention this morning. Beggars set out their tin cups and more vending carts are coming out to start their day.
A woman walks by with a toddler hanging on her shoulder. The child is about half of what his body weight should be, maybe less. The innocent's hair is whispy and poorly colored, like the shade of dust. I can see its scalp. There is no toddling taking place, Can the baby even walk? The mother is tiny and has obviously been stunted in her growth. The regeneration of poverty continues.
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On the train... Greenery immediately meets the tracks but only a few feet of the facade is there and it cannot hide what lies behind. Fields of trash- diapers, toilet paper, wrappers, bags-everything lies out in the dirt and piles several feet high. Crude shacks of aluminum and some more sturdy ones of brick go on row after row after row. The front of them is open and you can see children lying on the dirt and mothers stirring a pot of rice. Larger abandoned industrial buildings are also
here. Some men have made straw cots that hang on four sticks, about a foot above the ground. An older child picks through a toddler's hair looking for lice. Now there is a tent city; tarps hung on four crooked wobbly branches set upright in the earth- tthey are smashed almost on top of each other and everyone is moving about and within them talking, washing with dirty water and some are sipping from cups. The sun is still low in the sky. The day has just begun. It feels as if no one really want to wake up or to start their day.
More fields of trash.
Dogs walk unknowingly around, some lay against walls. Over there are two woman in a small patchy field of grass, they look like they are planting something- what? A boy sits by himself on the edge of a cement pool-shaped water container. He is alone and thinking.
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Agra, Home of the Taj Mahal… We are again on a rooftop, looking at the Taj Mahal from only a few meters away. A monkey dangles from a rooftop and looks on with us. A house pet dog prances after another monkey who has been teasing him in a game of tag. As the sun sets monkeys come out of everywhere. Babies suckle at the underside of their mother as she walks on all-fours over the buildings' walls. The goats below bleat at each other and at nothing at all. Dogs sadly ignore their cries and find a cool place to curl up for the night. A brown, filthy, hairy swine eats its way though a pile of trash. Gigantic white cows breathe heavily as their bloated, trash-filled bellies ache.
Where do these animals live? Far away from grazing fields or leafy trees or fields of fresh mud. They live amongst the people, the millions of human bodies surrounding them at all times. Their excrement fills up the streets. They seem disturbingly depressed and lonesome. I want to pet them, scratch their head, feed them a carrot but they propose too much of a threat to my health- a bite or even a lick from an animals infected with Rabies, and I could catch the disease myself.
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In the Business of Jaipur… A gigantically fat pig gorges herself as she stands on a mountain of rubbish. Her piglets follow her example and her searching snout as she moves through the heap with ravenous unending hunger. A slew of rickshaw drivers are lined up a few feet away making propositions to passer-byers. "Yes please. Where are you going? Cheap rickshaw. Where are you going? Sir! Sir! Yes please..." One driver has positioned his tiny frame on the balance of his bike. His legs rest on the narrow seat as his upper body is contorted into an L-shape in the carriage. A woman walks past the drivers with her hands bent backwards over her shoulders as she grabs on to the two rough handles of a cart overflowing with trash. She dumps the day's leftovers- several hundred pounds of trash- in the existing pig pile next to the street. Men stop mid-walk to gawk at the naive western girls who are crossing the street.
A skinny man with boney eye-sockets protruding from his face approaches us and offers a ride to our hotel in his rickshaw. We settle on a price and hop in the carriage attached to his bike that has no gears. He begins to petal. He weaves in and out of the traffic as honks yell from busses and cars. Griff and my mouths are agape as we watch this skeletal figure who must weigh less than 100lbs. push his way through each turn of the bike's petal. He takes us past the business of the bus station and away from the center of town. The rickshaw moves through streets quiet enough to hear only his feet on the ancient metal petals and the silent exhaustion emanating from his body. There again, is that lump in my throat- the one that I have become all too familiar with this past week. The wheels splash through the muddy remnants of they day's monsoon. I whisper something about guilt and unbalance to Griff. He nods because he is thinking the same thing.
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I wrote about these scenes during our first week in India. We are going on our second week now, and slowly we are adjusting. I cannot say that we are getting used to things yet because the culture here is a total 180 from what our brains have been trained to process. We cannot think like westerners. We cannot live like westerners. We are in India.
We have come to a place, perhaps THE place that the past seven months has been preparing us for. At first wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. But now we realize that this would be running from a responsibility. Responsibility for what? Honestly, we are not sure. Maybe to ourselves and our belief that attempting to understand another culture is one of the most powerful tools a person can possess. Maybe to our hope that India holds within its borders something beautiful and hopeful that we have not yet seen. Maybe to the inexplicable feeling that India will change our lives. Then again, maybe it's just because we're stubborn.
I wanna be bigger, stronger; Drive a faster car
To take me anywhere in seconds-To take me anywhere I wanna go
And drive around a faster car
I will settle for nothing less. I will settle for nothing less.
I wanna be bigger, stronger; Drive a faster car
At the touch of a button-I can go anywhere I wanna go
And drive around my faster car
I will settle for nothing less. I will settle for nothing less.
I think I wanna change my attitude.
I think I wanna change my attitude.
I think I wanna change my atmosphere.
-Coldplay lyrics from, "Bigger Stronger"
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BlackManx
Amy Hall
Wow
What a moving and beautifully written blog. I hope that you do find the 'something beautiful and hopeful'. Good luck. BlackManx