Written on Sept 2, 2012
The past two days sit in my mind in stark contrast to each other. Yesterday, day two in hot, humid, sweltering Delhi, began with a walking tour of one of Delhi's poorest neighborhoods, an area in which many street kids - children as young as five years old who have run away from home from both near and far - converge. The tour was organized by an organization named Salaam Balak, whose goal is to assist, nurture, educate and provide homes to street kids in Delhi. It was led by a former street kid - a man named Iqbal who, as a five-year old, ran away from home and boarded a train to Delhi in order to escape his parent's abuse, and who, after working some odd jobs and trying to survive on his own found his way to one of Salaam Balak's shelters - all before his seventh birthday. Iqbal - cheerful, optimistic, well-spoken, and full of dreams - asked us all to guess where in India he was from, and after we all threw out the names of the various Indian cities we know, he smiled and told us that even he didn't know the answer to that question.
His tour took us through narrow, damp, fly-filled streets, dotted with hole-in-the-wall barber shops, crumbling buildings, shrines to the Hindu gods, little food vendors, and both the begging and the motionless poor.
Iqbal then took us to one of Salaam Balak's shelters, a temporary home for boys aged 6-14. The second he brought us into the room in which the boys were gathered, it turned to pandemonium. We were swarmed by the kids, calling out to us "didi, didi!" ("big sister"), reaching out to shake our hands, telling us their names, jumping, climbing, grasping, yelling. They radiated energy, pure and unadulterated, running around the room, bouncing off the walls, meeting each one of us, taking pictures with our cameras and chattering away in Hindi that we couldn't understand.
In the room, playing with the boys, it would have been impossible to comprehend - and it didn't even really hit me until now - how much life they've lived already. It's not simply that they're poor, that they're living in a shelter, or that they were abused (most likely) - those are problems that we're familiar with in the United States. The thing that is truly impossible to believe is that many of these six-seven-eight year old kids have lived even more life than I have - they've been on their own, traveled across country, lived completely alone, fed themselves, tried to make their own way - and all in a city as congested, hectic and unforgiving as Delhi.
In the afternoon, we walked around Khan Market, what is considered Delhi's upscale shopping area, full of expensive foreign brands, in addition to fancy Indian ones. Even there, despite the extremely apparent difference from the slum-area market - much fewer people, more Western clothing, less trash, better smells - it was still a "marketplace" full of old, crumbling buildings, dirty streets, zig-zags of phone wires, beggers, pollution and a general run-down atmosphere. It was like nothing you would ever expect to see in the nicest neighborhood of a capital city in the United States or Europe. But, from my two days of experience in Delhi, it fit in perfectly there. Delhi, intoxicating, interesting, and overwhelming, is dirty, congested, run-down, a weird mix of sprawling impersonal city and underdeveloped village. It's vast - more vast than you could ever imagine - and filled with more people than you could ever imagine - people that are constantly out and everywhere, walking, driving, biking, working, all going in different directions, all almost colliding, all with nowhere to breathe because even in the open spaces, the air is too dusty (and often smelly) to get a good breath.
Now place that in contrast to the place I am writing from now: on Sunday morning, we took the Shatabdi Express from Delhi to Dehra Dun. The train ride was around six hours and breakfast lasted for at least half, if not more, of the time. Breakfast was a whole affair, with many different courses and rounds of tea periodically being served. Upon arrival in Dehra Dun, we took taxis on an hour ride up through the mountains, the streets gradually narrowing, the turns sharpening, the incline steepening and the cliffs growing. We drove up and up, past signs marking the rising altitude, past monkeys sitting on the side of the road, past little villages full of little school chilren, past lush greenery, all the way until we reached the mist-laced city of Mussoorie.
Mussoorie is where I'll be living for the next three weeks for orientation and intensive Hindi classes - and it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Everywhere you look there is rich green foliage and all surrounding us you can see the verdent mist-shrouded foothills of the Himalayas dotted with little villages and winding roads. The mountainside is unbelievably steep and, looking over the edge of the road, you can see these incredibly deep drops, covered in trees seeming to grow sideways out of the mountain. The most beautiful part of Mussoorie, however, is the mist. Most of the time you can see it moving in wisps right past your face, dancing and swirling as it travels. And boy, does it travel. If you stand, looking out over the mountains you can see the mist moving, rising up like an all-powerful being from the depths of the earth, becoming amorphous, joining with other clouds of mist, shifting, growing, whiting out the sky and the green in a matter of seconds - and then clearing again soon after. At times, when the mist is rising from below, thick and heavy, it feels like you are watching the earth being born, peaks rising out of the thick nothingness of the fog, a wonderous creation emerging out of a steaming pot.
When you compare this to Delhi, it is difficult to believe that it is even the same country. One is ruled by human needs and the other by the law of nature. One raises your hearbeat, the other calms it. Being able to experience both places in quick succession has been a really amazing lesson in India's diversity and has truly opened my eyes to what India has to offer.
The past two days sit in my mind in stark contrast to each other. Yesterday, day two in hot, humid, sweltering Delhi, began with a walking tour of one of Delhi's poorest neighborhoods, an area in which many street kids - children as young as five years old who have run away from home from both near and far - converge. The tour was organized by an organization named Salaam Balak, whose goal is to assist, nurture, educate and provide homes to street kids in Delhi. It was led by a former street kid - a man named Iqbal who, as a five-year old, ran away from home and boarded a train to Delhi in order to escape his parent's abuse, and who, after working some odd jobs and trying to survive on his own found his way to one of Salaam Balak's shelters - all before his seventh birthday. Iqbal - cheerful, optimistic, well-spoken, and full of dreams - asked us all to guess where in India he was from, and after we all threw out the names of the various Indian cities we know, he smiled and told us that even he didn't know the answer to that question.
His tour took us through narrow, damp, fly-filled streets, dotted with hole-in-the-wall barber shops, crumbling buildings, shrines to the Hindu gods, little food vendors, and both the begging and the motionless poor.
Iqbal then took us to one of Salaam Balak's shelters, a temporary home for boys aged 6-14. The second he brought us into the room in which the boys were gathered, it turned to pandemonium. We were swarmed by the kids, calling out to us "didi, didi!" ("big sister"), reaching out to shake our hands, telling us their names, jumping, climbing, grasping, yelling. They radiated energy, pure and unadulterated, running around the room, bouncing off the walls, meeting each one of us, taking pictures with our cameras and chattering away in Hindi that we couldn't understand.
In the room, playing with the boys, it would have been impossible to comprehend - and it didn't even really hit me until now - how much life they've lived already. It's not simply that they're poor, that they're living in a shelter, or that they were abused (most likely) - those are problems that we're familiar with in the United States. The thing that is truly impossible to believe is that many of these six-seven-eight year old kids have lived even more life than I have - they've been on their own, traveled across country, lived completely alone, fed themselves, tried to make their own way - and all in a city as congested, hectic and unforgiving as Delhi.
In the afternoon, we walked around Khan Market, what is considered Delhi's upscale shopping area, full of expensive foreign brands, in addition to fancy Indian ones. Even there, despite the extremely apparent difference from the slum-area market - much fewer people, more Western clothing, less trash, better smells - it was still a "marketplace" full of old, crumbling buildings, dirty streets, zig-zags of phone wires, beggers, pollution and a general run-down atmosphere. It was like nothing you would ever expect to see in the nicest neighborhood of a capital city in the United States or Europe. But, from my two days of experience in Delhi, it fit in perfectly there. Delhi, intoxicating, interesting, and overwhelming, is dirty, congested, run-down, a weird mix of sprawling impersonal city and underdeveloped village. It's vast - more vast than you could ever imagine - and filled with more people than you could ever imagine - people that are constantly out and everywhere, walking, driving, biking, working, all going in different directions, all almost colliding, all with nowhere to breathe because even in the open spaces, the air is too dusty (and often smelly) to get a good breath.
Now place that in contrast to the place I am writing from now: on Sunday morning, we took the Shatabdi Express from Delhi to Dehra Dun. The train ride was around six hours and breakfast lasted for at least half, if not more, of the time. Breakfast was a whole affair, with many different courses and rounds of tea periodically being served. Upon arrival in Dehra Dun, we took taxis on an hour ride up through the mountains, the streets gradually narrowing, the turns sharpening, the incline steepening and the cliffs growing. We drove up and up, past signs marking the rising altitude, past monkeys sitting on the side of the road, past little villages full of little school chilren, past lush greenery, all the way until we reached the mist-laced city of Mussoorie.
Mussoorie is where I'll be living for the next three weeks for orientation and intensive Hindi classes - and it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Everywhere you look there is rich green foliage and all surrounding us you can see the verdent mist-shrouded foothills of the Himalayas dotted with little villages and winding roads. The mountainside is unbelievably steep and, looking over the edge of the road, you can see these incredibly deep drops, covered in trees seeming to grow sideways out of the mountain. The most beautiful part of Mussoorie, however, is the mist. Most of the time you can see it moving in wisps right past your face, dancing and swirling as it travels. And boy, does it travel. If you stand, looking out over the mountains you can see the mist moving, rising up like an all-powerful being from the depths of the earth, becoming amorphous, joining with other clouds of mist, shifting, growing, whiting out the sky and the green in a matter of seconds - and then clearing again soon after. At times, when the mist is rising from below, thick and heavy, it feels like you are watching the earth being born, peaks rising out of the thick nothingness of the fog, a wonderous creation emerging out of a steaming pot.
When you compare this to Delhi, it is difficult to believe that it is even the same country. One is ruled by human needs and the other by the law of nature. One raises your hearbeat, the other calms it. Being able to experience both places in quick succession has been a really amazing lesson in India's diversity and has truly opened my eyes to what India has to offer.
No comments:
Post a Comment