DELHI
How quickly one becomes
accustomed to poverty and the consequent suffering. The deadening effect of the
noise of the traffic, the sheer numbers of people in various apparels, the heat
and the sweat, the dirt and the chaos: it
becomes too easy to forget that the swirling sea of humanity around you is in
some way connected to your own life.
I am in an auto rickshaw travelling
across the city from the Defence Colony to Humayun’s Tomb for a bit of
sightseeing. The busy city traffic is
crawling slowly in the opposite direction while we swiftly cruise along to the suburbs,
if there is such a thing in this vast, sprawling conurbation. Coming up to a
crossroads, there seems to be some altercation between a Sikh and a Muslim
about right of way which holds up the flow and an old wreck of a bus pulls up
alongside. Out of the window a man looks
at me and I look back.
He looks like me!
He is me as I am he as we
are all together. I think: If I had been born in India, that would
likely be me sitting on that bus. He
may be thinking a similar thought: Should
I have been born a westerner that may have been me in that auto rickshaw, money
in the pocket and few cares in the world.
There is a kind of a tacit
exchange between us and suddenly I feel a kind of empathy with him and wonder
where he is going so early in the morning: does he have a family and where are
they? Has he had to leave a village and rent a cheap room somewhere in the
city? Has he eaten today?
Life in Delhi is
hard. I always remember a long time ago
in my youth, when you could stand in the middle of London and actually stick
your thumb out to hitch a lift. Along
with a friend, I can’t remember exactly where we were going; we were picked up
by a car full of Nigerians. They looked at us and said: London
will break you like a twig! This is
how I felt about the city of Delhi; but then, when you see whole families
living below an underpass in the middle of a busy road with young kids running
around who had probably been born there, you realise the resilience of the
human spirit. There is a need to survive
under any circumstances.
The other week I was in
Bangkok. Walking around with a friend,
an old man sat on the road. He had no
legs and only one arm. From my pocket I pulled out 10 baht, 20 pence in British
currency. I never give to beggars. They’re part of a syndicate, he said.
I thought, I'd like to challenge that. But said instead, Unlikely, he just looks like an old,
crippled man. I don’t mind giving. He looks as if he needs some money.
It’s too easy to ignore
and bypass the unfortunate. Give what
you can. It’s money that you’re not going
to miss and it is a currency that can be exchanged for food.
Shrouds have no
pockets. We’re only here for a short
time and own nothing except our bodies, and even they are on temporary loan.
