India

I don’t think anyone left India unchanged. I say this in all honesty because the poverty we were exposed to was like nothing I have ever seen. I can’t count how many people I saw lying in the streets, on carts, benches, and sidewalks. Walking through Chennai and Agra (where the Taj is) everywhere you turn there was trash strewn, or people going to the bathroom in the streets, shanty homes, and half naked children. Still a few days later I am having trouble sorting through everything I saw. You can’t imagine the sheer magnitude of the homeless and destitute here. People are so desperate for money and at times they overwhelm you. As soon as they see you are white, ten people crowd around you trying to sell you any number of things, while kids come running down the street in the hope that one of us can give them some food. Their persistence wears you down, but even then it is all-relative. These people have nothing, and you can see it in their eyes. They somehow look lost and worn down by so many years of living on the streets, begging for money. I went to two children’s homes while in India as well. These facilities catered to the disabled and even though these kids were the lucky ones, it was still heartbreaking that even these facilities really couldn’t cope with all the kids they had. Many of the teachers didn’t have the background to handle teaching these kids, and so made do with what they could. And then what is even more startling is even when you are surrounded and overwhelmed, you can see some of the most beautiful buildings you have seen in your life: the Taj, Agra Fort, the Abandoned City, and so many wonderful temples. These places are huge and even looking at my pictures, don’t seem real. But I can’t say I was ever satisfied when I left these places. Even though I was at times annoyed with being constantly bombarded, the Taj and other monuments had lost the same spirit of the streets of India. These places, seemed to me, impractical and almost unimportant when on the other side of that barrier were a thousand homeless and hungry people. Leaving these places put things in perspective because the everyday reality of India, isn’t a magnificent palace, it’s the children, men and women who are starving. I read in the newspaper that on the Global Hunger Index, India ranks 66 our of 88 developing countries, behind China, Brazil and many less developed, as well as war torn, areas. I can’t say that I am shocked because I saw that hunger, we all did. All In all India was incredibly humbling and was really an eye opening experience.