Reflection #2 The Bliss of Naiveté

Michael

[Read Reflection #1 first]

I saw the effervescent smiles of the kids we played with and wondered if they were  always as happy as they appeared in our company or just happy because of the novelty of playing with us light-skinned tourists. When I walk down the road and see beggars sleeping on the side of the street, I struggle to believe the millions of ceaseless smiles shining at us as we walk past. I struggle to believe the smile of the cycle tuk tuk driver in Delhi as he turns and looks at us with a hearty grin and yet keeps all his worldly possessions in a pouch above our seat and uses his cycle tuk tuk as a home. 

I struggle also with the contradictions, the ones mentioned in my previous blog 'Photographs' as well as countless others. In the picturesque, enchanting hills of Darjeeling I remember watching on awkwardly as a man with no legs crawled along the street, pushing his pot of jangling coins out in front of him, wearing knee pads to prevent his lifeless legs from grazing as he drags them along. Adjacent to this ugliness the beautiful Himalayas hovered in the horizon, tourists walked past flashing cameras and school kids strolled home, happily chattering amongst themselves. 

For the children I think it's different. The smiles are born from blissful naiveté. They know only their familiar locale, their familiar routine and their friends who surround them everyday. Yesterday I experienced the perfect example of this. Using our free time to venture into a slum on our own, George, Ben and I were able to join in on a makeshift game of street football. Slum housing surrounded us, the ground was uneven dirt, a goat walked through the middle of our game, we stopped for 20 motorbikes and a couple of trucks, the ball bounced off walls and flew into welding shops and sagging balconies. Families emerged from houses to watch on in fascination, the kids called our names, smiling all the while. An attitude of exuberance and effervescent ebullience defined the spirit of our hour long game. You would expect that the people would reflect their grim, austere, bleak milieu but instead exuberance and liveliness permeated our makeshift street football game and the run-down, dreary surroundings were momentarily suffused with energy and vivacity. This is the best way to travel. Without a plan, without a structure, wandering on our own into the raw, authentic, genuine heart of the city. I feel like I could stay in Mumbai for another week, free to roam in the knowledge that in whatever direction we walked there would be countless other experiences to be had and memories to be made. Yet despite the delight I've seen in children's faces and their inexhaustible youthful energy despite their circumstances, how would their exuberant, perpetually smiling attitudes change if they knew the luxury in which we live back home?

I also have regrets. Mainly, I feel sad and a bit mad with myself for not being able to go see the slums in Brooklyn. Yet, feeling this way makes me feel somehow wrong and guilty. Why am I the one who is sad because I couldn't leer and stare on in fascination  at these poverty-stricken slum dwellers when they are the ones live in those dreadful conditions for their entire lives? I think partly because while naiveté may be bliss for those little children, for me, seeing the darkest parts of the world with my own eyes and stepping out from my earlier naiveté is pivotally important for my growth, for the growth of anyone who comes from a life of luxury. While for impoverished children naiveté may be bliss, for us travellers I think this logic is flipped.