The People Below

Note: I realized I hadn't posted this yet- it's something I wrote about 3 weeks in Chandigarh. Tomorrow, I will tell you all about my adventures with HH the Dalai Lama!

In India, I'm constantly faced with issues of class and social standing everyday, from the moment I go downstairs to have my breakfast, made by Kumal, a servant, to the evening when (if) I take a rickshaw home.

At first, the novelty of being served was stronger than any academic thoughts or moral implications. When the man in the train station carried my 50 pound bag on his head for a pittance, it just seemed unusual and interesting. When I took my first rickshaw ride, I was a bit uncomfortable with the ostentatiousness of it, being pedaled around by someone else, but it still all seemed new and confusing. When I first arrived at my new home in Chandigarh and was greeted by a servant grabbing my baggage, I felt a bit embarrassed.

Roasting peanuts, as they do every day.

But the more time I spend in India, the more that issues of equality and social rights stand out to me. As a girl with academic ambitions from a working-class family, I've spent many hours strained over the social injustice in my own country, the difficulties and horrible tragedies that the poor must endure everyday. I'm the kind of person who weeps during Capitalism: A Love Story (yeah, yeah, I know), wondering how many people I care about will someday be “dead peasants.”

It's a very bleak topic, but one that means a lot to me, which is why my time in India is bittersweet. I'm growing to love this country as if it were my own, and everyday I see thousands of Mother India's children in dire poverty and seeming hopelessness. I work with the poor every day, teaching them works like “sock,” and “monkey,” in English, hoping that it will somehow help them. 

While I was at the wedding in Karnal, the act of being served was really having an effect on me. The drastic contrast between the servants and the rich, fat, happy, and elaborately dressed Indian bourgeois was a bit more than I can take. I'm treated well here because my money is worth a lot, but when it comes down to it my place is closer to the servants than the served. While I was sitting, drinking coffee, I had to stop myself from breaking into tears; in front of me were three servants, one about my age, one fifteen years older, and an old man. It was the lifespan of a poor man before my very eyes.  I could not help but think of the children I am teaching, and wonder if I could ever really do enough.

Everywhere, there are people dying to serve me because my face tells them that I will give them rupees. They sit on the street and roast peanuts, the pedal my rickshaw, they try to sell me bangles on the sidewalk, or they beg me for money. The worst of it is the children; there are so many child beggars. Some of them are coached and governed by parents or others hoping to gain from their begging skills. I try to keep small coins in my pocket, but when I forget it's almost impossible to get them off of you. Only when you give them money, generally, will they stop. 

Even then, they still look so sad. 

On my way home from the bus station, I stopped for a tuk-tuk and agreed to pay 70 rupees for a ride home (a ridiculous price, but I was too tired to haggle).  The drivers actually physically began to fight over who would get my money. I climbed into one of the rickshaws, and the other driver jumped into it and pulled the key out of the ignition, gesturing for me to come with him as the other man fought him off. All of this over $1.50.  

A small colony. Image: Indiadaily.org

And then there are the plastic villages: more or less trash heaps that can extend for kilometers, filled with little tents made of tarps, old billboards, etc. Half-naked children play at the edge, women and men busy themselves inside or nap on the ground. 

Virali told me about her experiences in a local slum, called a Colony, where she was recruiting poor children for the free catch-up class.  They met a half-naked little boy who told them that he wasn't allowed to go to school. When asked to, he took them to his mother, who was breast feeding and surrounded by small children. "No," she said, "I don't want to send him to school because it's almost time for him to start working." 

One of thousands of strays.

Domestic animals have it little better. Chandigarh has a huge stray dog population; they're everywhere, often hurt or deranged. They're kicked out of the way; they scrounge through trash for food; their mental state is so bad that they can go from lounging to attacking at a moment's notice. A rather friendly blond dog that seems to live in the schoolyard snapped the other day (without noticeable provocation) and attacked a teacher before being scared away by a field hockey stick.

My purpose here is not to be bleak or depress you, because there is joy in India just as there is pain. But this experience is waking something in me, it's bringing a part of me alive that I need. I wanted to become an anthropologist not just so that I can do what I love and create knowledge, but because I care about the people I study. Everyday I'm here, my thoughts turn to my research: the anthropology of oppression, the anthropology of class struggle, the anthropology of poverty. Everyday I see more that I want to show to the world. 

2. Yet There is Hope

No matter how desensitized that Indians may seem to the poverty around them, there are moments in which my faith in the goodness of humanity is restored. This is times when I hear about an old man who left everything not to his children, but to the faithful servant who stayed by his side. Or when my hostess shares that she bought her servant of 20+ years a piece of land, which had been his dream. Or when I see the eyes of one of my students flash with a cleverness and life that gives me faith that they will rise out of the dust from which they came.