After a 30 hour flight (long stop over in Brussels), I am finally home from a 2 week stay in India. It was my first time visiting the country, and the trip itself was one part work related (I was visiting electronic waste dumping grounds) and one part personal (I was taking my mother to visit the birthplace of her grandfather).
I am trying not to view my experiences through an ethnocentric western lens - I recognize that values, customs and norms vary significantly across cultures. I am also no stranger to seeing poverty, my work has sent me to places with truly abhorrent living conditions. Heck, my parents are from a 3rd world country in the Caribbean.
With all of that in mind, NOTHING could prepare me for what I saw/experienced. I don't even know where to begin, but my impression of the country can be summarized in two words: Chaotic and Intense.
I stopped in Mumbai, Varanasi, Allahabad, and Faizabad during my stay. Mumbai was easily the most developed of the cities, with the more affluent areas mirroring anything you would see in Canada/United States. I was staying in a really nice hotel close to the Airport, and my very first thought was "This isn't bad at all".... until I ventured out into the surrounding area.
My first stop was the Dharavi slums, where a significant % of the world's electronic waste is processed. It is the second largest slum in the world, and has the highest population density of anywhere on earth (1.5m people in about 2 squared kilometers). The environmental and safety conditions were deplorable, people were melting down plastics with no safety equipment - the air stunk of solder, and I could barely squeeze down dirty alleys full of brackish water and open wires. With that being said, everybody there was extremely friendly, and the children seemed happy and curious. Not once did anyone ask me for money, and I left with a positive impression of the people (but not of the area).
When I was telling my cab driver of the experience, he said something curious "Those aren't the real slums sir, the real slums are behind the airport". Curiosity got the best of me and I asked him to drive by - literally right behind the hotel I was staying, there were people living out in the open where the government had bulldozed a squatter settlement. Men, woman and children just sitting on the ground in the insane heat, some begging and others trying to sell random wares to passing cars etc.
Against the drivers wishes, I got out of the car and gave money to a woman with a baby. I was instantly swarmed, and emptied my pockets of whatever rupees I had. The driver recommended that if I wanted to help, give them food instead, because the men will simply take the money from the woman/children and spend it on alcohol.
The next day, I asked the same driver to take me to a grocery store where I bought 20kg each of rice, dhal and black eyed peas, and asked him to help me distribute it. I genuinely meant well, but the entire situation backfired again. Within minutes of stopping the car, we were swarmed again. A sea of hands, some of them children, begging for whatever they could get. Some families took more, while others got nothing. Truthfully, I was sort of just paralyzed in the moment and gave out whatever was in the bag until I ran out. When there was no food left, we (the driver and I) were yelled and sworn at. He took the brunt of it, because they accused him of wanting to steal the food for himself.
I went back to my hotel room and wept. I don't exactly know what I expected to happen, but I felt completely ineffectual - whatever I gave was simply a drop in an ocean of need.
My mom and I flew out to Varanasi on the second leg of our trip. I am not going to write at length about the experience other than it was wretched - from the way starving stray dogs lay dying in the open, to smog so thick that I felt my lungs were on fire, the only saving grace was a boat tour of the ganjees. That was really beautiful, but I almost got into a fight with another Canadian, because he was messing around with one of the local kids who was selling lota flowers.
The guy and his friends were trying to bargain the kid down to 2 rupees down from 5 - keep in mind, that is literally fractions of a penny in CAD. When the kid said no, the tourist told him to do something funny to entertain him and his friends, and maybe then he would give him the money. I saw red and told him to stop fucking around with the kid. I was fully prepared to throw down until the boat tour intervened and separated our groups.
On a random note, India has managed to commodify almost every aspect of an entire religion (Hinduism). While I don't subscribe to any organized religion, I went to the Golden Temple, where so called spiritual men demanded money at every turn to pay hommage to some God, who could either bless/curse me depending on my level of generosity. It was incredibly cult like, and whatever vestige of Hindusim I had left in me died that day.
I toured where the three rivers converge into the Ganjees. Along the "beach", there were children in rags baked black by the sun, collecting cow dung to turn into fuel for cooking. I later found out that the people there were considered Chamar (the lowest caste) and it looked like a UNICEF commercial being played out in real time. How anyone can survive in those conditions seems almost unfathonable, much less find a way to escape their poverty.
There were countless of other heartbreaking sites and experiences, all speaking to a country still very much hung up on caste, status, perceived worth of people etc. This anecdote probably helps illustrate life in India for the poor. My driver for the time that I was Mumbai was named Raju - he was a wonderful person that I got to know well during my trip, and he treated my mom as though she were his own (helping her walk down the street, holding her hand through traffic etc). He told me how he lives in the slums, and how he never had a chance at education, but that he wants his kids to have a better life. He mentioned off hand that he was struggling to pay their school fees, but never did he ask for anything. In fact, he initially refused his tip because I had agreed to pay a flat rate for each day.
On my last day (I had to return to Mumbai to fly back to Canada), I told him that if I couldn't help the situation as a whole, I would like to make a difference in one persons life, so I offered to pay his kids school fees indefinitely (It is hardly a grand gesture, it amounts to about $300CAD per year). He declined and told me "Sir, I have cheated you. My name is not Raju, it is Mohammed. I use the name Raju so people think he is hindu, otherwise they may not want to hire me". He cried as he told me this, because he legitimately felt as though he had betrayed my trust.
Given that I couldn't give a rat's ass about what religion a man is or isn't, I told him that it didn't matter to me, and the offer still stands. He cried, my mom and I cried, and I left India never wanting to return, but finding some measure of solace in that I could help one family. I chose to pay the fees more so out of guilt than anything - I live a life of undeserved luxury and I felt like I was doing something wrong looking into the daily struggles of peoples lives as a tourist, and then flying back to Canada.
Why am I telling you all of this? In part, it is because I wanted to get it off of my chest and remind people that we should be so grateful we get to call Canada/America home. Also, I wanted to share a personal story about why education is so important, both to myself and on the whole.
The same people I am describing above (the poorly educated laborers in the slums) was where my family came from three generations ago. I never met my grandparents, but from what I know, they were field hands that the British forced into indentured labor and brought over to Guyana in the early 1900s. My paternal grandfather was orphaned at 7, and my maternal grandmother was illiterate.
But in a strange twist of fate, Guyana was one of the few British colonies where school was free for everyone (boys and girls) and my parents had the opportunity to attend. Both were dirt poor (literal sense, the floors made of dirt and the roofs of zinc), but through the power of education, both excelled, received scholarships, and went on to university in Canada. Both are retired now, my mom was a teacher for almost 40 years and my father was a professor for 33 (since I was born).
I am who I am because of my parents. To think that within such a short period of time, my ancestors went from living in the slums of Allahabad to being white collar professionals, all because they had access to education.
Education is both a right and privilege - every child should have access to it, but they need to appreciate what it can do when taken earnestly. It is a vehicle for social mobility, and I hope that one day Raju's children can share their story about how going to school allowed them to reach such great heights.
