Leh is incredible... we flew in yesturday morning, with the most spectacular view of the himalayas below. Our hotel is unbelievable; it's as though the forest created it... everything is wood, and blends beautifully into the background of the town. The area is so different from Delhi... it's peacefulness resonates everywhere... you can feel the Buddhism all around. The Dali Lama is in town actually, but we have to leave for the villages before we get a chance to see him...
It was starting to pour on our last night in Delhi... today i checked the newspapers and read that several hundred people had died in the flooding in the north... pretty incredible, nature just coming down and deciding who gets to live or die. I don't have many good thoughts about Delhi - I felt it was dirty, congested, cold... everything that's wrong with modern cities, and none of the positives. But to read about death, and death so close you can touch it, wade through it... it's a chilly feeling, one that makes you stop, makes you wonder if perhaps you saw someone on the street, or met someone along the way, who is no longer here. Rain, heavy rain... and then, nothing.
On another note, in my last few minutes with the internet... there's a saying I read somewhere, goes something like, "the further away you are from home, the closer you feel to it". The more I travel, the more people I meet, the more I feel like a New Yorker, like a Jew, like an American... it's funny that years of living in NYC made me feel further from it, but just a few days in a completely different world, and I find myself telling everyone how "amazing" central park is, how great the medical training in the Bronx is... I suppose that when everything is foreign, the things you know become so much more dear.
Well, this is it... tomorrow we set out on a two-day bus trip to our first village clinic in Padum, after which we will be trekking to get to our other clinic sites. If anyone's interested in finding out more about the program i'm doing, I posted a link in a previous blog to the Himalayan Health Exchange. I still can't believe we're going to be treating 1500 patients in just 13 days of clinics!!! I'm going to keep a journal of my experiences, and then post my entires when I get back...
Thank you all for reading this and writing to me often... a short letter from home is like a hot cup of tea in the freezing cold...
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7 comments:
That was way too much change in how you feel about things in just a few days. Becoming callous to the awful life of the people there should take more time. I also find it hard to believe that you read that book in one day since you never even mentioned it to me once while you were a senior in high school. And you should've spent more time with me while you were home if you were going to get bored anyway before you left.
I actually liked her post. I'm sure that the experience could be overwhelming. I'm sure that if anybody would go to India, it would be an emotional experience.
OK Where are you already? You should be back now.
becoming callous to people's "awful lives" often takes very little time. in fact, it takes about as much time as realizing that there is nothing you can do to make it all better for all of them. its really a coping mechanism, rather than a personality change. its just one little trick learned pretty quickly on any hospital ward. that being said, i personally would hesitate to judge zina's apparent change in feelings over her time in India. from how i know her, she is incredibly observant, conscientious, and rational. i think her words are pretty solid, and i'd take them to the bank . . .
Zina rational? I think you lost all credibility by throwing that in there. Although she should really run away with you at this point. I find it hard to believe that anyone would think of her that way.
What happened to the 2 weeks that you were going to be away?
Hey guys... I just read the comments everyone has been making, and would like to make a comment myself! (Oh, and, I was supposed to be away for three weeks, as I was... and now i'm back to civilization and will be writing a great deal).
As for the MSF book... I really did read it in one day; that memory is quite clear in my mind. There were quite a few photographs, so perhaps that helped... and maybe, Sean, i didn't mention it because we weren't talking at the time ;)... but in any case, you know my email, so feel free to discuss that with me in a more private forum :).
As for my thoughts on Delhi... it's not that I became callous or numb, really... just that, being in such a place, smelling everything, seeing everything - really taking it all in... after a while, you begin to accept what you see, accept the reality that's presented to you. You don't have a choice - it's there in front of you, and you either look it in the face, or hide away in your hotel room, watching bad american movies on a fuzzy TV set (I, um, did both). But when you emerge from your room, and accept Delhi for what it is - a city both depressing and amazing - your senses adjust, and, perhaps to deal with the enormity of it all, they also dull a little.
There's no excuse for looking past the beggars on the street... in every context, such extreme poverty will always be heart-wrenching. But if you accept what you see - rather than being startled every time - then you can deal with where you are and what you're doing, and can allow yourself to spend your energies trying to help instead of stare.
I do wonder, what happens to your soul when you become more comfortable with seeing misery, every day? I wonder about that not just in India, but in the emergency room, particularly in the Bronx. I accept what I see - unhappily, but I do accept it for the reality that it is - accept, and then try to work in that context.
Maybe this doesn't make sense... or maybe it's entirely clear. Either way, that's my reality... it's been my reality for a long time, actually... I guess it's a good thing i'm writing about it.
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