I knew almost nothing about India when I landed in
Mumbai. I had basically only seen
Slum Dog Millionaire and knew that Indian women wore saris. Lame, I know.
We arrived in Mumbai late at night, got our bags and cleared
customs. The first thing that we
noticed was how very different the Indians interacted with us than the Thais
had. Thailand is nicknamed “The
Land of Smiles” with good reason. But
when we made eye contact and smiled at several people in the Mumbai airport, we
were met with scowls. Maybe people
were just grouchy because it was very late at night and they were tired from
traveling? We wanted so badly to
believe that!
The weight of what I was walking into began to hit me on the
bus ride from the airport to our hostel.
I expected poverty. But
then, there was poverty in Cambodia also.
We worked in the slums, for crying out loud! But Kolkata features poverty on a whole new level. We passed hundreds of homeless people
sleeping on the streets during that bus ride. Some had a blanket, and others were just curled up with the
curb. Homelessness in India looks
so different from homelessness in America.
We spent 4 days in Mumbi for our mid trip ‘debrief’ before
heading to Kolkata. It was
supposed to allot some down time for us to kind of process what we had gone through
the past 2 months before continuing on with our journey. The reoccurring concern at debrief was
“fear”. We were encouraged not to
be afraid of India, and people kept praying about the fears that they had. So I, being the clueless wonder that I
was, started to get nervous. What
did all of these people know that I didn’t that was making them so freaked out
about India? Thankfully we had no Internet
at the hostel that we were staying at, or I would have researched every awful
thing I could have about India.
As it turned out, I didn’t have anything to “fear” per se
about India. But it was definitely
a foreign land. Much more foreign
than Cambodia or Thailand- or any other country I have ever been to, for that
matter. For one thing, there is a
caste system. For those of you who
are unfamiliar as I was, let me break it down for you.
There are basically 4 ‘castes’ or ‘classes’ of people. You have the Brahmins who are the
elites- traditionally Hindu priests or other religious officials, the
Kshatriyas- the warriors, the Vaishyas- the merchants, and the Sudras-the
laborers. They are represnted by
parts of the body, (Brahmin being the head, Kshatriyas being the hands,
Vaishyas being the thighs, and Sudras being the feet). Then there is a group of people who are
not even considered to be a part of the society or the caste system. They are called the Dalits or
“untouchables”. The Dalits
generally have jobs like disposing of human waste or animal carcasses. The body part that represents them is
the bottom of the feet- the filthiest part of the body.
They believe that the highest form or reincarnation is to
come back as a cow. Cows are holy
animals. They basically just roam
free and it is illegal to harm one.
And by illegal, I mean that you will be killed if you kill one.
As you might have guessed, prostitutes are Dalits. They are considered ‘untouchable’. They are not considered a part of the
society, and they and their children are often excluded from schools and Hindu
temples. (Children need a last
name in order to enroll in school, and that last name needs to come from the
father. If the parents are not
married-as many prostitutes are not- the child will not have a last name and
therefore not be allowed into the school system.) In Hindu, they believe that people are reincarnated based on
how they lived their life, so there is no way to rise up from your
circumstances- which is a given in American society. Everyone believes that you are living out the life that you
deserve based on your performance in your past life. This is why most people won’t help the Dalits- they think it
is basically their penance, and if they “get it right” this time around, they
might move on to a higher caste in their next life.
Another shocking thing about India is how they treat their
widows. When a Hindu person dies,
their body is burned and historically, when a woman was widowed, she was tied
to her dead husband’s body and was burned alive. In more modern times, this practice is less common, and
instead the woman has been allowed to live, but she was to eat only rice and
bread- only carbohydrates and no protein- so that she would die as quickly as
possible due to malnourishment.
This practice is fortunately fading, but it still happens- and this
complete disregard of women is a reoccurring theme.
You can find signs of the unimportance of women in several
places. One example is in the
airports. There is a separate line
for men and women to go through security.
This makes sense, and there is a privacy screen for the women to stand
behind, which is nice. The problem
is that the women’s line has one security agent and the men’s line has 5- or at
least this was the case in the Mumbai airport. It took us quite a lot longer to pass through security for
this reason. Another “interesting”
aspect of gender relations is that there is a special section on the metro for
women. We were told in debrief
that it is important for us to dress in traditional Indian garb and to make
sure to stand in the women’s section.
Apparently, a girl on our squad had traveled to India before, got into
the wrong car, and was surrounded by men and groped until she was able to get
away at the next stop. So we were
instructed to dress in a certain way and stand in a certain place in order to
(hopefully) not get felt up on our way to ministry. (Awesome!)
Speaking of ministry, we were not allowed to be
“missionaries” in India. We had to
be super careful not to use “the m word” the entire time- and that is why I am
just now writing and posting blogs about India. All communication coming into and going out of India is screened. Big brother is watching.
In Kolkata, garbage and filth is ubiquitous. There are no garbage cans outside, so
everyone just throws their garbage in the ground. Also, the water is only turned on twice a day, and only for
a short time. You know when the
water is on because everyone comes into the streets and begins bathing in the
water from the waterspouts. The
men keep a pair of shorts on and wash themselves. The children strip down completely except for the black
cords that most have around their stomachs- which I am told they were given in
a Hindu temple during some sort of ritual. I never saw women bathing, although men, women and children
did seem to spend a lot of time brushing their teeth in the street.
One interesting thing I noticed was that almost every baby
seemed to have an ugly mole right I the center of their forehead. At first I thought it was just a
birthmark, but then when I saw it on more and more babies, I wondered what was
going on. It turns out that it is
actually very taboo to tell a parent that they have a beautiful child. They believe that the evil spirits will
hear you and will come and take their child away. In order to help mitigate this, they put these markings on
their child’s heads to make them “ugly” so that no one will tell them that they
have a beautiful child, and no spirits will come to steal them.
The poverty is absolutely overwhelming. Crushingly so. It breaks your heart and makes you feel
helpless at the same time. We
didn’t know what to do. We were living
on $2/day for food, and our first solution was to split that in half and live
on $1/day so that we could spend the other dollar on buying food for the
beggars. Then we learned that the
beggars are just targeting foreigners and you never see them begging from
Indian citizens-and the Indians are unhappy with all of the begging because
they are very proud of their city.
We were asked by the long-term volunteers at Mother House (Mother
Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity compound) not to encouraging the begging by
giving in. Apparently, many of
these beggars chose to beg rather than work because it was such easy money-
such gullible foreigners. But it
still never felt right to walk past a starving man, woman or child who was
asking for help.
Additionally, not all of the beggars even got to keep the
money. Our ministry told us on our
very first day, that all of the beggars on the street where we pick up the
metro were actually owned. They
had been trafficked as children, and put on the street as beggars ever
since. That is how they have spent
every day of their lives- sitting on the sidewalk begging for rupees. And what’s worse is that they were all
mutilated. Every single one. Some were missing hands, some feet,
some hands and feet, some legs.
They sat on the sidewalk, holding out their bandaged stumps saying, “Please
auntie, please”. And it broke my
heart to walk past them. I
wondered if they didn’t make their quota what would happen to them? Would their captors do some other
terrible thing to make them more pathetic in order to garner more sympathy and
change?
So many of the beggars were children. Some were just begging and some were
trying to sell small items. Our
ministry contact also shared with us that in all of the studies that have been
conducted in Kolkata about the street children, 100% of children over the age
of 6 years old have been “sexually interfered with”. So even if they haven’t been trafficked yet, most are raped
regularly. I’m not sure which is
worse.
India was absolutely the heaviest and most intense place I
have ever been in my life. It is
the darkest, and most debilitating hopeless environment I could have ever dreamt
of. This is part of the reason
that I would love so much to move there.
I just cry when I think about India… and I know for a fact that Jesus
does, too. He loves those people
so much more than I do- and He wants them all to rise above their man made
caste and see themselves and each other the way that He does- as beautiful children
of God… so precious in His sight.
I want to be used by God to bring this message to India. To Kolkata. To the poorest of the poor. But for now, that is not the calling I hear from my Lord,
and I would so much rather be square in the middle of His perfect will for my
life than to run off and try to do it on my own. In the meantime, I keep weeping over India….and praying that
they will start eating cows.
