The Crop and the Pest

  We had just come back from a historical tomb in Delhi, and our tour bus was stopped at a red light. Knock knock knock. I peer at the window to see two children outside in the street banging on the side of the bus, hoping to get the attention of us, the tourists, that were on board. One was a little girl with bandages covering both arms, the other a 5 year old looking boy holding an infant. No adults, or parents, in sight. Knock knock knock. They got our attention; about half the bus was looking at the windows down at them. With the eyes of the bus on her, the girl starts unraveling the bandages, exposing charred and mangled red flesh circling her forearms. Her wounds were precise, in the same spot on both arms and having clearly defined edges between her normal skin and the mangled skin. Our tour leader explained that due to the exactness of her wounds, they were probably done intentionally so she would be able to get more money from begging. Donors give the most when they feel like they’re helping those who appear helpless. She parades her wounds along each window, hoping that one us rich tourists would open the window and drop some money down. The windows on the buses don’t open for this reason.
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  India was absolutely, without a doubt, the most intense and overwhelming experience of my life. Nothing I can say here will be accurate enough to describe the immensity that is India. There was nothing that could have been said to me that could have prepared me for this.
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  Lets start at the beginning: First day in Chennai- I need some rupees (Indian money). I get off the gangway and head off to the port gate with my small group. There are few real taxis in India, instead they have these very small three wheeled vehicles called Rickshaws. The Rickshaw has a small two stroke motor, and two small benches, one in front for the driver, and one directly behind it for the passengers. The shape of the vehicle kind of reminds me of one of the old VW Beetles with a sort of rounded dome top and maybe half the size. The sides are open, so there are no doors to inhibit climbing in and out if on the run. Instead of a steering wheel there are handle bars with a clutch and break kind of like a motorcycle. The vehicle can fit 3 people snuggly, one driver up front and two people on the bench in back. 3 people on the back is a little more crunched, but doable.
So we get to the gate of the port and we’re immediately stormed by at least 15 rickshaw drivers competing for our fair. They rush up to my group of 4 and start pulling us in different direction. “You, come this way my friend into my Rickshaw.”Everyone in my group has like 3 different hands pulling on them. It’s absolute chaos. Sensory overload. We solidify our group together, push off many of the people pulling on our arms, and try to focus on just a couple drivers.

  “We need to go to the ATM, how much will it be?”

  At first they tell us our group will have to split up into 2 and 2 because by law not that many are able to fit into one Rickshaw. We believe them on this, and agree to split up. After some bargaining we arrange to be taken to the ATM for 100 Rupees per person (about $2USD). We know we’re being overcharged, because the US Embassy Agent who had briefed us said that fares for locals are never over 50 Rupees. We’re not locals, and we just want to get out of the chaos of being pulled on from every which direction, so we agree on 100 and off we go. Driving in India is absolutely crazy. I think one of the previously mentioned US Embassy Agents summed it up best during the diplomatic briefing by saying, “The lane lines are coincidental.”What a marvelous way to put it. On the Rickshaw we whizzed in and around traffic, and several times weaved through oncoming traffic to pass up slower traffic going in our own direction. I’ve always been taught in the past that moving against oncoming traffic is how people die, so needless to say all, the rickshaw driving in India was quite the thrill. We eventually make it alive to the ATM, get some money, and hop back in the same Rickshaw. The driver then takes us to this touristy shop with lots of Indian fabrics and sculpted figurines, jewelry, etc etc. the driveway is full of about 8 other Rickshaws of Semester at Sea students. All the drivers of the rickshaws are huddled around a clipboard and our writing things down on it. We found out later that all the drivers were paid off to take all the Semester at Sea students to this one overpriced tourist shop no matter where they ask to go. Frustrating. We go in the shop, not really knowing why we had been taken there, and ask our driver to take us back to the boat. He says he needs to get gas, so we stop at a gas station and he starts to fill up. While filling up he pokes his head in the rickshaw and tells us that we each owe 1000 rupees. This is up from 100. Having already been upset that we were taken to the janky tourist shop without asking, we get out of his rickshaw, and tell him we refuse to pay him that, we had agreed on only 100. He acts confused, and eventually says we’ll only owe 100 rupees and that we should get back in. After some more price confirming, we get in, and tell him to just take us back to the ship. Once on the road again he ups the price again, this time to 500 rupees, saying that we had went to 3 locations (ATM, shopping, and to the gas station), and that since he took us 3 places instead of just one that we have to pay him more than 100. We’re fed up with this guy. We mitigate him until we get back to where we were docked. I give him 200 rupees, 100 for to and from the ATM by my figuring (even though we originally agreed on 100 for the whole round trip) and we collectively walk away to him continuing to demand more. Sorry bud. Annoyed in India was my first impression, aye aye.

  The remainder of the day we I went on a school field trip to St. Thomas’s Mount, which was the hill in Chennai that St. Thomas the apostle (AKA “Doubting Thomas”) was martyred. Legend tells that in the first century he was carving a cross atop this specific hill in what is now the present day Chennai when a pigeon hunter accidentally shot him with an arrow. I realize the martyr of St. Thomas has some great religious significance, but being accidentally shot by an arrow has got to be one of the most liberal interpretations of the word “martyr”I’ve ever come across. But I digress. Besides the temple constructed for St. Thomas, there is also an orphanage at the mount for abandoned Indian children. We toured the orphanage, learned some of the history from the nuns who were showing us around. So many cute little children. At the time I felt like the orphanage conditions were quite meager. But thinking back, I’m saddened that not all unwanted children have the opportunity to be in an orphanage like that, because when compared to some other living conditions that are to be discussed, this orphanage actually had stellar conditions. Hindsight is always 20/20.

  As a side note: on Rickshaws: Our record for India was seven in the Rickshaw. On the last day we had a particularly awesome driver and 4 of us got in to be taken to Pondi Bazaar, an open air market. I snug of front with the driver to experience the intensity of weaving through traffic in the front seat. En route to the market, we, by complete random chance, see two of our friends from the boat walking along the sidewalk. Chennai has millions and millions of people in it so this was literally like seeing a needle in a hey stack. We yell from the street at them to catch another Rickshaw and meet us at Pondi. My driver looks at me, stops the Rickshaw in the middle of traffic, and waves our two friends over. They run the street, and pile in the back, giving us a grand total of 7 people on the Rickshaw. It was truly amazing. Weaving through traffic with 7 people crammed into the space that belongs to three people tops was fantastic. The driver didn’t even charge us extra, but we gave him a great tip.

  The rest of my trip in India is somewhat of a blur. Wake at 5:45AM to leave for an early flight to Delhi with a group of about 70 SAS students. I got the middle seat, between two SAS teachers, Oceanography on the aisle, Drama on the window. Neither were teachers of classes I was taking, but we did have some good conversation about the woes of Sarah Palin, among other things. We arrive in Delhi and eat at a nice Indian restaurant. Indian food consists of several different pastes, brightly colored chicken, and one of the most amazing carbohydrates ever created, Nan bread. (Someone look of the recipe to buttered Nan please and get back to me.) After lunch we go see the Gandhi grave/memorial. That invoked some pretty amazing feelings, but I was still so tired at the time I was a little numb. We tour around Delhi for a couple more hours, drive by some legislative buildings, and then head off to the train station for our ride to Agra.

  It was afternoon late afternoon by the time we reach the train station. Sensory Overload part two. The place is a hub of human activity. Follow the person in front of you, or you’ll get lost, possibly forever. Navigating a group of 70 extremely out of place looking students through an Indian train station is nothing short of insanity. Train stations are not commonly used by tourists, so we got stares and glares from everyone. Walking along the platform all the trains we saw had only open cars with electricity. Windows were open air and barred, and the doors were just openings that didn’t appear to close. Rats crawled about the floor and large insects accumulated on the cushionless seats. Everyone in the group is thinking “No way in hell is this our train…”as we walked along it. After all we were promised air conditioning. And it was 80 and humid. We finally get to two nicer cars, which were the ones we would take. These train cars were certainly a luxury compared to the open ones we had just seen, but that doesn’t mean they were absent of bugs and rats. The car did have windows, but the glass was so foggy and dirty from neglect that you couldn’t see anything out of them. Air conditioning worked in half of the cart. The toilets were squatter toilets. (If you don’t know what a squatter toilet is, let it be sufficient to say that they are target practice for men and acrobatics for women) This was all fine and well with me, I got over the conditions after about 10 minutes as soon as the A/C kicked in and was infinitely thankful that we at least had a car that was enclosed and had lights. And hey, after all the train ride was only a short 2 hours, they told us. But then it wasn’t…Oh how they lie. 2 hours became 5 and a half. Keep in mind we had been up since 5:45 in the morning, so as the length of the trip increased we all started to conk out to sleep, leaning up against the walls of the cart so the bugs and roaches could mingle on our shoulders and heads. “At least this car is better than the one attached to it,”I kept thinking. And I was happy.

  It was nearly midnight by the time the train, roaches included, made it to Agra. The train station there was similarly chaotic, but the night had brought hundreds of homeless campers who had set up their sleeping arrangements on the platform and the surrounding muddy outskirts. Rats scurry from one sleeper to the next. . Similar sights met me as we traveled by bus through the streets of Agra to our hotel. “Sidewalks”were lined with bodies, supposedly living. We were told that it was not uncommon for men in wheel barrows to come through the sidewalks in the unthinkable hours of the morning to collect the dead. I wondered how they distinguished the people from the bodies. Mixed with the sleeping were bustling shanty markets and shops, selling hot food, snacks, second hand everything, etc. Shops were made out of the rubbles of decrepit buildings, and were often fortified with wooden logs. The dichotomy between the sleeping and the sleepless, all packed along the same streets, on the same sidewalks even, was incredible. We got to the hotel and had a late dinner of India’s finest pastes and carbs. It was very tasty. Sleep.

  Wake. 6 AM alarm. We head out to see the Taj Mahal by sunrise. Even though it was barely day, the children outside the Taj were in full force trying to sell little trinkets, pens, postcards, etc. to the camera clad tourists. They make more money from selling things to tourists than they do going to school, so it is very common for lower caste families to have their children selling by the age of 5, if that. I’ll spare you the details here, but at the Taj I experienced the most insistent heckling of my life from people trying to sell stuff. They would come up as you were waiting in line to get into the Taj area and tug on your clothes and pitch their sales. The trick is to look them in the eye and tell them “No Thank you,”very firmly. To avoid confrontation with every single seller, we tried to have some fun and tell people we were from Spain, Romania, Russia, anywhere where they don’t speak a lot of English. Except this didn’t work because they all, children included, knew the selling phrases of the languages of all these countries. I remember hearing a little girl yell “Mira! Mira!!”as I scurried away from her after saying I only spoke Spanish.

  To describe the Taj would take a vocabulary I am not privy too. The structure is completely made out of white marble, all of it carved with amazing details and inlayed with semi precious stones. Because of the nature of the marble, the appearance of the Taj changes depending on the light conditions- in effect you are never actually seeing the Taj, but how the sun glistens off it. We were there at sunrise, so the marble turned shades of purple, red, orange, then yellow as the world turned over. There are great surrounding structures on either side and expansive gardens and ponds in front. The back edge is bordered by a river that looks out to another historical fort in the distance. Inside is the mausoleum for the women who the structure was created for in the 1600s. The Taj was built by the 5th Mughal emperor, I believe, who was lamenting over the death of his favorite wife (he had multiple, of course). What a true romantic.

  India is the ultimate heterotopia. Here we have the Taj Mahal, a wonder of the world, surrounded by the city of Agra, where the brilliant radiance of the Taj doesn’t little to brighten the extreme poverty embracing the city. All in the same place, at the same time.

  As another side note, I felt like I was on an urban safari while traveling around Delhi and Agra by bus. I saw cows, boars, bulls, elephants, monkeys, water buffalo, and camels. Cows are sacred in India, so if a cow comes up to your booth at the market and starts eating all your vegetables there is really nothing you can do about it. In fact it’s considered good luck. Sometimes they’ll even dress up their cows with nice linens and jewelry and have it wonder around the cities to give people it crosses good luck. They call these cows “Holy cows.”No joke. Another thing about street life in India, is that most places don’t have plumbing. Often times there will be one water pipe with continuously flowing water that entire area will use. This means bathroom are few and far between. Fields and dirt patches on the sides of the roads served as good defecation grounds. You wouldn’t believe how many people I saw shitting on the side of the road in broad daylight. There weren’t even outhouses or organized bathroom holes. It was literally pick a spot and plop.

  After the Taj we tour Agra some more, making it to all of the great Mughal forts and deserted cities or marble and sandstone. Some of these structures are just amazing; many have expansive catacombs and underground tunnels spanning over 200 miles long. It’s sad that the most conventional beauty of these places is the sprawling marble and sandstone structures of the past, rather than the livelihoods of the people of the present. We made it back to the Taj again to view it at sunset. Yes, it’s amazing. But as I write this now, the events of my India trip are fading in and out of memory. It’s difficult to admire such beauty amidst such great poverty. We would go on to spend 1 day in Agra and another day in Delhi before returning to Chennai by train. The return train was much nicer and faster than the one we arrived on, but the train station experience was just as sprawling as I had remembered it. Homeless children would carry infants hoping to get a couple rupees here and there. Beggars with mangled limbs crawled to your feet and tugged on your shirt. A woman walked by and tried to sell us her baby for 300 Rupees ($6 US). It’s horrifying, but this is all true, this all really happened. This is life changing for me. This is life for others.

  It is the things like these that really demonstrated the lack of development in India. You wonder what must be going through someone’s mind if they’re prepared to sell their child for a meal. What is life like for someone confined to the earth because of limbs that never fully developed from malnutrition? And how hard is the decision for those who mangle themselves intentionally to appear like they are afflicted with the conditions that others actually have because it gets them a good begging salary. It’s economics. You really have to experience it first hand to understand how overwhelming the poverty is. Even then, I’d say my comprehension of what I experienced is fleeting. Upon returning from my Delhi/Agra trip and meeting up with my other friends who had traveled elsewhere around India I heard other profound stories. Several of my friends told of their ventures to Varanasi. Varanasi is the holy city of the Hindu’s, and it is believed to be the oldest standing city in the world. The holy Ganges River runs through it, which is believed to cleanse the people who use it. Varanasi is where Hindu’s go to die. The banks of the river contain crematories where bodies are constantly burning. However, if you’re a pregnant woman or an infant the religion prevents you from being cremated, so such bodies are always flowing downstream. Not only that, but because the river is believed to be cleansing, the native population bathes in this same river, washing themselves as dead bodies float pass them. The Ganges is supplied by melting ice from the Himalayas, so it is also where much of the drinking water of India is piped from. It gets to a point where this experience makes you realize that you just cannot help everyone. Sure a few dollars here and there will brighten someone’s day, but what about everyone else? Comprehension of the immensity of India’s poverty is over bearing, so rather than focusing on the big picture you begin to realize that you can only affect those who you are immediately with at any one moment. If everyone always thinks small picture, the big picture will be drawn as a consequence. It is here that the hopeless are most admirable and the helpless must be helped. If not, outlooks are grim.

  “There will always be terrorism and instability in the world,”Desmond Tutu explained to us on our last day in South Africa, “as long as there continues to be conditions that make people desperate.”
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