Leaving Mumbai

Yesterday I was sitting in the hotel cafe having my last coffee at the Courtyard Marriott.  I had a friendly chat with the server and he asked what I found the most different about Mumbai compared to my home.  "The garbage, I knew it!" he laughed.  And, the children and beggars on the street, I added.  We don't know how to handle it I said, and told him about the woman who followed us for five blocks yesterday, asking over and over for rice, and why no lady? Why no? Why no?

Intellectually we know begging is a business, but after awhile I start to wonder the same thing—why no? What if her baby really is hungry; what if she isn’t part of one of these businesses and is on her own, actually hungry? It wears you down and saying no feels incredibly uncomfortable and morally wrong when the 50 rupees she wants is less a dollar for me, and ignoring her goes against everything I’ve been taught about being polite; when someone is talking to you, give them your attention—especially, and always, a child.  Then, the annoyance and frustration that eventually comes after five blocks makes me feel like a complete ass.  I didn’t get into this much detail with my waiter friend obviously, but even at the mention of begging his countenance grew a little more somber and it seemed that even he struggled to explain it to me in any way that would make sense. Should I not have broached this topic?  Did I offend?  I don't think so, and it was an honest answer to an honest question.  I asked him where he lived, and he said very near to the hotel.  My experience of “very near to the hotel” was rather jarring, so I probed a little more.  Do you have an apartment?  No, he lives with his parents and his father is a chemist at the hospital nearby.  I can't get my head around these normal life scenes of friends, work, family, and daily routines against this bizarre, chaotic background of squalor, filth, and homelessness.  Nearer to the city center it was clearly a wealthier area, but that did not mean an absence of garbage and street families.  France and I were wondering in conversation one day, where’s the middle class? Do the super poor live amongst the super rich?  Is there a middle class?  What does my waiter friend’s family home look like?  He looks like any other handsome, stylish, bright-eyed 22 year old full of hope and dreams, with a cool watch and funky hair.  By description his family sounds middle class, but for the rest I am left to my curiosity.  I can’t imagine his home, as he can’t imagine mine.

France and I were talking last night, and we agreed that what is getting to us is the Indian’s apparent lack of care for their own.  We know there’s a lot we don’t understand, we hear the government is trying but there are just so many people, we hear that India has a full-on child social welfare system.  We know this.  But knowing by general report is not seeing and feeling.  On the surface, it appears like complete disregard for social order, environmental health and safety, and like I said in my proposal, the absence of a moral responsibility to care for your society’s children.  In Canada we have safety nets in place to catch children at risk—social programs; hot lunch programs; etc.  Of course there are horrible situations behind closed doors, but this is different.  This is a naked baby sitting on the street, a toddler playing in the dirt of the gutter or garbage heap, a three year old coming into traffic to ask for rupees.  Ours is not a perfect system, of course, but it's not this; it's not even in the same ballpark.  This isn't even just poverty, like a simple life where possessions are few and life has a quiet rhythm.  This urban poverty reeks of desperation, abuse, and people driven to indecency like shitting in the river in plain view—and this was in the “nice” area, about 50 yards from the Gateway of India monument.  Children forced and reduced to humiliating themselves at a car window for less than a Canadian dollar.  This is not just poverty, this seems like something else, something well...evil.  At this moment I balk at the idea of India being a spiritual mega-destination.  I enjoyed the experience of being blessed by a Hindu priest and will not take off my bracelet, but like we wondered, real priest?  300 rupees is a pretty steep donation...and maybe a good way to fake out the tourists and make a killing.  I want to just believe he was a real priest and leave my memory in tact.

I am not sorry to be leaving Mumbai, and I have no wish to return.  Mumbai has been a first impression of chaos and contradictions, desperation and corruption, street posters for her holiness teaching from the sacred scriptures on a certain date and time, blowing in the wind above the very young face at the cab window pleading with me for some rupees.  And further down the road, a Porsche dealership. And in the middle of all this still, normal-ness, normal people living their lives, going about their work and studies, caring for and loving their children.  It’s the extremeness I can't understand.  I am judging, yes, but what could possibly be the rightness in this social chaos that I'm not understanding?  So much to understand about a country as old as India, with a billion people.  And my experience and impressions are only my own.  France shares them, but when talking with Krysta and Haley at the airport, waiting to fly to Ahmedabad, they had a completely opposite experience, an enchanting experience of meeting a young woman their age, going to her home, having their hands painted with henna, and dancing in a street festival.  They stayed clear of the tourist areas and didn’t experience any begging .  They simply can’t wait to come back to Mumbai.  Our times in Mumbai couldn’t have been more different, or their focus was elsewhere.  Could it be that I only saw what I was looking to see, and expecting to find?  I’m not sure, I expected poverty but until you see this you can’t imagine it.  To an extent I have to do direct my focus to the awfulness during my time here, my focus is the street children, but am I keeping my gaze too narrow, seeing only the sorrows and missing the rest?

Chapter Ahmedabad begins today.  I’m going to try and extend my gaze and leave these thoughts and feelings aside for now.  There is so much more...there has to be, and there definitely is.