Reflection #1 Has India Changed Me?

Michael

You smirk because it sounds cheesy, the classic India immersion pseudo-philosophising, but when I ask myself this question now, it is not altogether as ridiculous and easy to dismiss as it had been less than one month ago. 

I suppose 'ridiculous' isn't the right word, I remember that in the build up to the trip I would love to go round grinning while telling my friends how I was about to have "the eye-opening, life-changing, experience of a lifetime". But back then, deep down, I don't know if I really believed myself.

Warnings in advance for the obscenely long series of blogs, but this is a bit of an outpouring of all that I've been feeling for the past month. But before I can say how I feel and how the trip has affected me, I think I need to first process what I've seen.

I've seen so many stories, and even though we have seen small spots of hope at NGO's like Freeset, Future Hope and Asha, a pervading sense of hopeless saturates and weighs down the air. I didn't think that before, at the start of the trip I saw only the spots of colour, the hope and thought this place would soon change for the better. Then I talked to someone older, more hardened by the world and less clouded by youthful naiveté and the hopeless and depressing began to nag and tug at my original optimism. The beauty and richness of India certainly did not disappear, but at the same time I saw a country so far in the hole, trending downhill for so many years that a recovery anytime in the next 75 years seemed practically impossible. I saw the beauty of the Ganges, the majesty of the Himalayas, the allure of warm smiles, but more and more I now began to notice the cycle. The vicious cycle of hopelessness; a mother with outstretched hand accompanied by a kid who sits in her arms and copies the action, begging for money and food. A dad working at the docks, stacking a pile of fish, his kid watching on ready to take up the family business without the opportunity nor even the thought of having a different career.

Watching the depressingly unfortunate and unfair cycle of poverty, it truly hit me how the lucky marbles are not at all distributed evenly. And how I have stumbled into the world with a hand filled with much more than just a fair share. Indian children on the streets of Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai may never know anything other than their mother's street side food stall, their father's beaten up fishing boat and yet whatever happens to me, I'll still always have a home with plentiful opportunity back in New Zealand.