Somewhere, someone is fervently sweeping, sweeping the rubbish into more rubbish. The sound of brisk determined efforts to sweep away the foul smell, long dulled by conditioned experience. There is a man haphazardly sprawled across her path, insects roam his motionless limbs without permission but without contest. She nonchalantly steps over him like a selophane gum wrapper discarded arbitrarily without a care.
Not two armlengths from his dead or alive carcass sits a woman who looks as if thousands of days of contending with survival has beaten time into her face so severely or she is truly older than God, but either way her existence of squatting in a puddle asking for coins is too pitiful to dwell on longer than a fleeting glance otherwise reducing me to a puddle of tears.
Across the street there is a valet directing a patron to park around another body that randomly fell catatonic in a particular parking spot. My focus pans out to a man sleeping on his prosthetic legs as a pillow. Interrupting my attention is the tugging of my shirt as a little girl, maybe 5 years old, caked in makeup holding a naked crying baby and motioning for something to eat.
These sights enter my visual cortex as fast as the scenery flies by on a theme park ride as I run to keep up with the crowd traveling down a quick stretch of crumbling sidewalk. So not to get trampled I step over each of these lives with the rest of the herd talking on their cell phones, bartering for fruit, and racing to the metro.
Its as if I am delusional for even concerning myself to look at all. So I don’t slow my pace and I run with the crowd to catch the 9:45 south to Shabavasar. My eyes absorb their faces but my mind is in a blurred panic, but my face reveals nothing and I elbow my way through the metro to the women’s car.
But it is writen:
11 There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.
Deut 15:11
16 He defended the cause of the poor and needy,
and so all went well.
Is that not what it means to know me?�
declares the LORD.
Jer 22:16
So as I pass by their shadows Jesus’ name and peace drips off my lips.
Today I walked the train platform at Kolkotta where the aid workers for Mother Theresa’s house of the dying pick up those needing admittance to the mothers house. I held a woman’s hand who rattled off in Hindi or Bengali and I spoke back prayers and blessings in Jesus name.
this is the most I can say for now. pray for india; a smile is scarce
