Train to Delhi was about 5 hours late. An Indian gentleman informed me that there is a saying in India, "There's India Standard Time and then there's India Stretched Time." We boarded a sleeper train that was supposed to leave at 6am and actually left at 11:30am-ish. While waiting, the Indian wildlife proved entertaining. A cow was chowing down on some garbage in the train terminal about two feet from Meghan. A pack of at least 15 monkeys screeched across the platform and up into the rafters when a woman threw a plastic bottle at them, thus disturbing their garbage feast with the rats down on the train tracks.
The smell of curry, cooking oil, cow manueur, and exhaust combined with bicycle rickshaws, auto rickshaws, taxi's, Hindu and Islamic worship, foggy gray skies, blaring horns from some of the most chaotic driving I've ever seen, and vividly colorful clothing....truly, India is a place designed to assault the senses. And despite the searing poverty among many other unpleasantries, I loved being there.
After nearly 40 hours of travel, I arrived home yesterday, was able to sleep well for a whopping four hours before the jetlag had me wide awake at 3am this morning. This would be the first morning in two weeks I awoke to dead silence. No Islamic call to prayer at 5am. No blaring traffic horns outside. No snake-charmer music in the hotel hallway. Just dead silence. Eerily so. Loud silence, in fact.
It's funny the things we take for granted until living in an entirely different context. Drinkable tap water. Reliable electricity. Heat in the winter. People in the U.S. don't have to burn their garbage on the sidewalk in order to stay warm at night. And the morning newspaper headlines don't report how many people died from the cold the night before, especially when Lucknow's definition of cold is only 30 degrees Farenheit.
On the other hand, India is also a place of profound paradox. Before arriving I read about how India is making major headway in technology and software development, thus propelling itself onto the frontlines of techological advancements. Yet at the same time I'm convinced that without the hand-written ledger, India might cease to exist. Need a coke and a snack at the local food mart? The cashier whips out a legder that looks about 100 years old and records your items, then uses the calculator if you have a large order. Need to check in at your hotel? The world's largest ledger will somehow make it into the picture.
Before arriving in India, I was expecting poverty on a scale unlike anything I've ever seen. I'd seen the pictures, watched the documentaries, read reports. I saw Slumdog Millionaire just like everyone else. I thought I was ready. But there's academic knowing, and then there's the knowing that comes from hands-on interaction. Even with all my mental preparation and expectations, I was still shell-shocked. While so many of my American peers obsess about exfoliation, tannning beds, and name brands, I had to swallow the fact that one of the leading causes of death among women in the villages is simply from giving birth (their deaths being prevented had they had medical care available). Or how about parents refusing polio vaccinations for their children simply because one religious group spreads untrue rumors that the government is not actually vaccinating for polio. "They are out to sterilize your children," the rumor goes. The result? That's right. Polio epidemics, which lead to polio beggars. But hey, at least they're not sterilized, right? I could go on and on.
However, I was praying for God to help me see beyond what I saw. I know there is more to people than their poverty, and I didn't want to simply return home with an "oh-my-god-the-poverty-was-unreal" perspective. What God showed me was suprisingly beautiful. People in India are deeply spiritual. In fact, they will often talk spirituality and religion before they even tell you their name and profession. Community and communal living is so key to people in India that I found myself envious of their sense of warmth, generosity, hospitality, and simplicity (even more so in the villages). Many people warm themselves at night by collecting heaps of garbage and setting them on fire on the sidewalk. It is not an uncommon sight to drive through the city at night and see people huddled around minature garbage-bonfires talking and laughing together. Nor is it uncommon to see groups of children playing cricket, running across rooftops, and playing games in the streets. I saw one kid dancing on the slum rooftops early in the morning, God knows why. I had to ask myself, what in the world do you have to dance about? And then I realized that I was viewing their world entirely through a Western lens where life's highest premium is material wealth, safety, comfort, and convenience --these things come at their own great cost, very often breeding another type of poverty within (i.e. no time for others, materialism, greed, and obesity). Though the poor in India work harder than anyone I've ever seen, they also have a great deal of free time, as their pace of life is often much slower. Their free time is spent in community with their neighbors and families and an endless network of relationships. What does one do at night without electricty and heating in the winter? Build a fire and drink chai with your family and neighbors, that's what. (Can I just say that Chai in India is phenominally good? Except for this one village where the goat's milk tasted a little off....or maybe that was the salt.)
So, while there are many reasons to pity the poor in India (most of which are valid), the closer I moved toward them, I found myself envying them as well. I cried many times over their living conditions, but I also laughed with them, and they laughed at us. I thoroughly enjoyed the company of a people who make me smile within, and I experienced a joy independent of material wealth and convenience -- a joy strong enough to thrive in the dark and despised places of our world. In India God moved within the deepest part of my being, made my heart swell, and with an inaudible whisper said, "This is what it means to live."
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