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Contrast, Part 2

I am constantly trying to quantify the contrasts that are India, or at least Pune.  But they evade me.  It’s as if I cannot fathom all I can see.  My brain does not know how to translate it.  I remember the Nisqually Earthquake in Seattle in 2001.  I had just finished an appointment with my broker in downtown Seattle.  I came down the elevator from the 24^th floor, the elevator doors opened, and as I stepped out, the ground shook and there was an enormous boom.  There was a lot of construction going on outside, so I assumed it was related.  I walked out the doors to the sidewalk and looked right, up 4^th Avenue.  I stood and stared as the road, the entire, asphalt city street for several blocks was making a wave.  It was actually rising and falling like a sound wave.  And the high-rise buildings on either side were swaying with the rise and fall of the street, left to right, tilting at improbable angles.  It was not possible.  It was impossible.  My mind could not interpret what it was seeing because it was so beyond my realm of experience and of belief.  I just stared, frozen to the spot, until my brain heard someone say, “earthquake.”  That word was within my realm of experience and understanding, so I was then able to react and move.

This is how I feel about India.  So much of what I see is within my realm of experience.  I understand it.  But right next to all of the things I can comprehend, are things that I cannot.  I think it’s like the earthquake.  I know something is happening, that I’m seeing something different, but I can’t comprehend it.  My brain cannot translate it into anything familiar. It’s too far outside my realm of experience. 

But then you begin to adjust.  Enough becomes known or experienced, that you start to put things into your own perspective.  Today I was being driven to a shop to buy my kids “traditional Indian wear” for Diwali celebrations at school tomorrow.  And as we went around a corner in Aundh, my mind said, “that looks like that neighborhood in San Francisco where Andy used to live,” without, of course, using words.  When that thought reached my consciousness (it’s infrequently instantaneous), I took a closer look.  It wasn’t anything like San Francisco, really.  But the layout of the shops and perhaps the height of the buildings, and some of the colors, brought my lower consciousness to San Francisco.  To something known.  To something within my realm of experience. 

So when I see dirt and piles of garbage lining the road, and it’s dusty and dirty and unpleasant to look at, with cows and street dogs and a gigantic pig all eating the rubbish, and walking down that road, past those animals, over that filth, is a beautiful woman in a bright, colorful sari, and behind that woman are 5 schoolgirls in traditional Indian wear laughing and chatting and looking for all the world to me like any teenager, I’m shocked by the contrasts.  When I see a mall and movie theatre with all shining surfaces and gleaming glass and familiar lines, but right next to it is a fax and printing shop that is literally a tin hut with canvas and plank walls. A family clearly lives there too, and business that includes electricity and phone and internet, in a place that can’t seem to even have running water and probably doesn’t, is conducted, my mind draws a blank.  My mind can’t quite pick out what strikes so deeply in my gut.  Part is known, part is not.

The other day I saw three very young children.  A boy of about 9, a girl around 6 and another girl around 4.  The boy and the older girl were each carrying a smaller child-the boy an infant, the girl a small toddler.  Each carried child was asleep in a sling, carried carelessly, yet tenderly, by the elder children.  It was a devastating picture of poverty.The children were so dirty, their clothing torn.  Their burdens far too big for their little bodies or their ages.  Yet the 6 year old was sucking happily on a bright red lollipop, and they were prancing around, laughing and chattering.  They looked so carefree, yet so burdened.  The little girl was so small and so young.  She seemed as if she could only be innocent, a little girl dancing in the street as she plays with her brother and sister.  

But when some university students came by with leftovers from their meal, this little girl was fierce and determined, physically tripping them up and grabbing at them and pulling them, dodging amongst their feet like a swarm of rats.  The fact that I can equate a 4 year old child with a swarm of rats-this is the feeling I get in my gut, that my mind can’t fathom, or can’t face. 

 

The contrasts are stark.  They are harsh.  They are somehow also beautiful.