Juxtaposition

Waking up to Delhi this morning (again at around 6am, thanks to the tireless efforts of dogs and merchants making sure i don't sleep past sunrise), I lay in bed thinking (and sweating... a lot). Last night, the Belgians and I met up with Soham and his friend at an upscale restaurant in downtown New Delhi. It was a 30 minute rickshaw drive away (a rickshaw, by the way, is a precarious little vehicle without doors that weaves in and out of traffic in an admirable effort to get its' passengers to their destination with the greatest chance of death possible... now i understand how the Indian taxi drivers got to be so damn fearless... NYC is nothing!). In any case, this 30 minute drive took us all the way through Delhi, and by the time we got to our destination, I thought I had made it out of the slums and into Europe. The modern Asian restaurant (unfortunately playing 80's pop music) was eons away from the pockets of poverty we had just driven past; the tree-lined streets and expensive cars advertised an entirely different world than the one populated by bicycle-rickshaws and crippled beggars. As Soham put it, you could come to this part of Delhi and forget you ever left the states.

What has struck me most about India so far is not the incredible poverty, but the unbelievable juxtaposition of such raw suffering with equally startling wealth. Last night, as we were walking through Pahranganj's main street in search of a rickshaw, i felt a hand brush my shoulder; I turned to see that it was a beggar... a teenage beggar, just barely, with deformed arms and just one startling brown eye. I'm ashamed to admit that i didn't give him any change; I would have, but my immediate reaction was to run - i gasped and ran ahead to catch up with the Belgians. I know all about congenital deformities - the embryology, the pathophysiology, the anatomy. What i don't know is what it's like to beg on the street for a rupee, and have a stranger run from you in shock. (That stranger also almost ran into a cow's ass... karma, I suppose). As we puttered along in our little green rickshaw, it was hard to miss the makeshift bonfires dotting the sides of the wide, modern boulevards, lighting up the tin shacks that house millions. The streets are always shock full of people; trendy businessmen with cell phones step over the half-naked men sprawled out sleeping on the sidewalk; trendy women in glittering silvar kamees walk past dusty mothers holding naked toddlers. Shacks cluster outside tall gates protecting magnificent office buildings; cows and homeless dogs wander past street-stands piled high with goodies, the occasional sniff or wandering eye leading to a hard smack from a vendor. It's almost as though there are two Indias, existing in the same physical space but entirely separate from each other. I cannot imagine such a juxtaposition in the US; even NYC, with its' infamous poverty, the poorest are clustered, identified, noticed. We have soup kitchens, shelters, social workers... hell, there's always a tray of food available at an emergency room. It is not so in Delhi; here, poverty is just another social class.

I am adjusting, still adjusting, to this new reality that Delhi has presented me. The smells of the main bazaar bother me a little less, and darting through traffic to cross the street almost seems normal; even my haggling is improving (though I did get grossly overcharged for a traveling chess set earlier). I am also not as shocked, though perhaps that's not such an improvement; as the horror wears off, I can start saying no to the street children, no to the beggars, no to the second India. Normality is entirely dependent on perception, and as I work my new surroundings into my subconscious understanding of the world, even the most horrible things are allowed to fade into the background. I walked around all day today, but I wonder if I didn't see less.