Delhi Realized

                Two days without internet access has brought forward a lot of realizations. 1. I am so electronically tuned in and dependent all of the time. 2. It’s really hard having everyone that I love on the other side of the planet and not having a way to communicate with them. There have been so many times when I’ve simply wanted to tell a detail of my day or tell how much I love someone and am unable to do so.

                The past two days have been miserably hot. The whole group is drained, dehydrated, and lethargic. In fact, dehydration hit so badly today that one of the girls threw up in the street. I actually haven’t given AC much thought as I, like the majority, grew up with it. I don’ t think that is something I will ever take for granted again. I compare sleeping in our bedroom to being outside in Alabama in June. (Went there this past month and trust me, it’s really hot) I wake up to a damp bed (sweat) and I eagerly drink at least four giant bottles of water a day but that still doesn’t do the trick. It’s tolerable, though; I have the luxury of providing for myself a cold bottle of water and a fan. There are, however, a massive amount of people here who don’t even have that and they are dying (mostly children) on the street every single day in exceptionally huge amounts on days like this. I passed by so many of them. So many bodies in that holding place between this world and whatever happens next. You can tell when you look in their eyes, the fight is gone.

                Today (Thursday) was the hardest day for me. We went sightseeing in Old Delhi and the poverty was even more rampant than I had seen which I didn’t even think was possible. I’ll never forget the group of us passing through a tunnel that went under a really busy road. There were probably twenty people sleeping on the sidewalk in the tunnel because shade is scarcer than food here. Most were without shoes, all were without body fat. They had only their cupped hands to comfort their heads as they slept on concrete. They were covered in flies but seemed indifferent to the flies whether from exhaustion or depression. I wondered if there were some that were about to transition either to somewhere else or nothing else; both possibilities are better than their current situation, I promise.

                In India, everyone says to not give beggars money because you’ll get swarmed by more beggars  and most of them are enslaved to someone that takes all the money anyway. Easier said than done. In America we don’t have children begging for money. In America, the homeless often buy alcohol with their money and we use this knowledge as justification not to give into their pleading. In India, the homeless are truly and completely desperate and I promise you, they genuinely want money for food and clean water. Today a little boy, about four, came up to us with eye liner and a mustache painted on his little face. He did circus tricks and then proceeded to plead for money. If I thought he’d actually get to have it for himself, I’d give it all to him. But I had the feeling that the man standing on the corner watching him like a hawk was the only one who would benefit and then my money would perpetuate this tiny soul’s enslavement.

                Everything about India is so different than the world I was fortunate enough to grow up in. Arjun, the man who comes to our hostel to give us Hindi lessons was explaining that even though the government here offers free schooling, it’s not mandatory. So, instead, poor children (70% of the children here) are forced to work. They then don’t learn how to speak English, read, or write and suddenly they find themselves to be adults with nowhere to go but to stay on the impoverished path they grew up in. This give me an image in my head of children born into filthy basements without stairs and they have to live in this basement until they grow old, catch a disease, or starve to death.

                In our hostel, there is one person that lives here with us. He is 12 and he does all of the cooking and cleaning. Some of the girls were upset that IVHQ (our volunteer organization)  would hire a 12 year old but when the situation is looked at through the lens of the culture and world around us, I’d say it’s a blessing that IVHQ hired him. His parents couldn’t afford to keep him and now he has a nice place to live and food to eat. His cooking is impressive too, I told him that he should be a chef. But as he is so shy around us, he just looked down at the naan he was frying.

                One of the more creative ways that women try to earn money here is that when we’re least expecting it, they grab our hands and start applying henna. They then tell you that you owe them 100 rupees (a little less than $2). Henna takes weeks to come off, mind you. I’ve just never in my life been surrounded by so much desperation and I find myself unable to conjure up enough peaceful or blissful thoughts to counteract it. No one should have to live like this. I’m constantly trying to think of ways that I can paint light over the darkness here but I just come up feeling overwhelmed.

                I honestly would wish the experience of witnessing this much poverty on anyone in the U.S. Not because I am mean but because I feel more alive than I have ever felt.  There is something about seeing conditions in India first hand that make me realize just how big the world is and how small I am. I’ve never been so grateful for what I have in my entire life. I feel like since there is so much fiction on television and there is an overuse of Photoshop, our brains are trained to not fully absorb what is presented to us on flat surfaces. One has to physically be here to smell the raw sewage, see the trash that covers every inch of the city, hear people desperately pleading for water, feel a child pull at your hand and make eye contact while asking for money, and taste the hot, humid, and oppressive air to make one realize that this is really happening to our fellow earth dwellers. I feel like no one can ever understand the world or the human experience without actually getting out into the world and seeing how differently other humans experience life… I am certainly only beginning to get just a little taste of the world and I already feel my perceptions expanded. Though, heart wrenching, I have never felt so much like I’m actually living life.