The hardest part about India is seeing myself becoming hardened and numb to the atrocious situations occurring around me. At Pria Market, the local place to go for dinner, a movie, or the grocery store, children follow us around begging. As soon as we arrive, since we look markedly like foriegners, children between the ages of roughly 8 to 12 approach us. One boy has bold green eyes that contrast with his golden brown skin. He holds up drawings of trees and houses, to show us his talent and to exchage his only trade for a few rupees. The kids will motion to their mouths indicating that they are hungry. During the first week, Nick gave two boys ten rupees each. As we stood there deciding where next to go in the market, we were suddenly surrounded by five more children. They encircled Nick and hoped to get as lucky as their friends. Sometimes the kids will follow us for five minutes as we walk around doing errands. They are skilled at begging and walking at the same time and know a few words of English such as "please madam". One time I was standing in the market drinking from a bottle of orange soda I had just purchased. A seven year old boy, wearing a ragged T-shirt and cut off jeans, his face smeared with dirt and no shoes came up to me begging, making motions that he was thirsty. I finished my gulp and looked at my friends, wondering what to do. The child stood there watching and again asking for something. I tentatively held out the bottle and he grabbed it. I watched as he strolled away indulging in half a bottle of orange soda.
If you acknowledge them, they will follow you and keep begging. If you give to them, it will attract more children and at times their mothers. It is a difficult moment to realize that you either must decide to always give, or to find a way to steel yourself against them. Any eye contact will trigger their attempts so if you do not want to be bothered or held back from whatever errand you are trying to accomplish, you must ignore them. At first it feels so inhumane, to see a small child begging for any amount of money and not even look them in the face. In order to get anything done at the market however, one needs to learn not to see them. You must adapt to continuing your conversation and stride as if there is not a skinny boy at your side saying "please ma'am". As difficult as this is, the hardest part I am only realizing now; accepting that I am capable of building up that wall, and walking by without helping. Part of me argues that I could afford to give each child a whole dollar a day and still stay within budget. But then that is only helping each child in this market, how many hundreds of ten year olds go hungry in my neighborhood here alone. How much would a dollar help? I have heard warnings that the children will spend it on drugs, seeking their only refuge from their twisted childhood. I could give them food, but would quickly have to become a walking soup kitchen. I saw one child begging at the take out window of McDonalds. I saw one woman, clearly mentally ill, sitting on the ground at the market, ranting while her tiny baby flailed on a blanket in front of her. Who could I call? Is it my place to save that baby? I do spend my days working in the slums, but is that enough? Does that make up for my ability to deftly swerve around the children begging in front of me. When I am not with the other volunteers, who's phenotypes betray their foriegn status, I am approached less. Should I be pleased? that I do not have to be so assaulted by hungry children, or should I feel all the more guilty, that they assume more quickly that I will ignore them.
After being in India for a month, I have walked by countless beggars on the street. I am struck by the number of physical deformities I have passed on the street. I do not mean to objectify these people by taking a photo, I hope to convey their humanity, I hope to strike some level of commonality, instead of just evoking pity. This is is a very real fact of life in India. One young man at the Taj Mahal entrance sat on the ground cross legged, and his left arm went behind his neck and came down crookedly onto his right shoulder. I have seen a man using two pairs of flip flops, one for his feet and one for his hands. His knees bent outwards and his calves and ankles were as thin as my wrists. He clambered along the ground, in the midst of a myriad of wheels whizzing around on all sides as he crossed the dangerous street. Here was a human being, reduced to a starving four legged creature, who was ignored by the hundreds of people on the street. I have seen men with mangled feet sitting on the sidewalk with a cup in front of them. One man chanted a single word over and over in a croak, hoping for a few rupees to be dropped into his cup.
While driving, the more mobile people approach the vehicle. One man pressed his hand which had only two fingers left, against the window the whole time we were stopped at a red light. Unable to deal with this frightening site, or more likely, unable to look into his eyes and then look away, we hurriedly engaged in conversation amongst ourselves inside the vehicle, no one comfortable enough to acknowledge the fact that this man was on the other side of the car door.
In the evenings one frequently passes families made of sagging skin around weak bones, sleeping on the hard ground. Little distinguishes the street people's social status from the dogs and pigs who wander the same areas, living off the garbage piles on street corners. One family inhabits a corner made of a large pile of dirt on the way to the Asha office. They sleep beneath a blue tarp stuck onto two poles. Every morning an emaciated woman bundles together pink roses to give her seven year old daughter who spends the days approaching cars at red lights trying to make enough to survive. I'll never forget the image of her standing alone in the pouring rain of the summer monsoon, drenched to the bone, holding the dilapidated roses in her hand.
It seems that Westerners who have the means to visit countries where this type of poverty exists, have their own ways of dealing with their fellow humans. At first I thought that the people of Delhi were cold hearted and selfish to be able to ignore the blatant struggles of people on the streets. I felt nauseated at the sight of two tiny children sleeping on a pile of dirt, naked to the world, on a street corner of Vasant Kunj. I always brought food for the begging children on the corners who approached our car. It was hard for me to walk by deformed bodies groaning on the sidewalk. But, a few weeks into it, I am able to avert my eyes, continue a conversation, or push the sights out of my mind. It terrifies me. If I am capable of this, someone who I consider to be pretty socially conscious person, then no wonder the wealthy, the governments, the world, are able to go on existing while humans exist in utterly unfathomable conditions. I wonder where all those people are right now. It's nighttime, its raining outside, and there are innumerable mosquitos and disease carrying pests overloading the humid outdoors. How do these people survive? The answer is not all of them do. But the ones that do, that wake up every morning and make a drawing or a bundle of roses in order to earn enough charity to be able to eat, how do they manage to accept that the world has turned its back on them. I work in the slums, where there is extreme poverty, but the fact of the matter is that the street people have it worse. They do not even have single room homes to get out of the elements. They rely on the traffic and shoppers to help them obtain the most basic needs of a human being. And If I have learned to ignore them in one month, what are their chances of success, begging from people who have spent their lives around this type of poverty?
This is one of the hardest things I have learned in India, about the country, but about myself and my humanity.
