the india that i came to see
i’ve really come to understand india, an india that i wouldn’t have been able to understand through being shifted around from one relatives house to another’s through the windows of one of my cousins’ a/c cars. its this india that i wanted to see and have my eyes opened to. its also this india that i’m not unsad to leave. it’s this india that my parents sought to leave, to make a better life in America. they sacrificed a lot just for us, and here i am coming back to try to understand what they left.
i now understand how most every Indian parent wants for their child to become an engineer, doctor, or lawyer and prioritize education above all else. the fear is poverty, and in india, poverty means living in a house made of tin, and cleaning houses or or doing embroidery or hand work, or worse yet, picking through trash. while that really isn’t an option in America, our parents have a picture of poverty way in the back of their heads that looks like the poverty in India. education and professional plans are a guarantee for their kids to have a good life.
something that surprised me that i understand is the attraction of suburbia and a nice clean home or cookie cutter apartment. yesterday deepti and i had lunch at her supervisor’s apartment in the suburbs, and were blown away by how nice and clean the apartment was. i would prefer that place to ours in a heartbeat. its ironical because in America i prefer the old historical houses that have “so much more personality.”
the culture of yelling in order to get anything done or to gain respect is also something that i’m starting to personally understand. at the center, whenever there is a conflict, people raise their voices and assert that they are right and the other person is wrong, without even understanding the other person’s point of view. it’s completely opposite to the way i strive to communicate. for the past two weeks, it was something that was really concerning me, because to me it seemed to be so destructive. i’ve suggested to the project directors to initiate more communication/life skills session with the rest of the staff and peer educators, and have put together a few activities that i might be able to do with them this last week. but change is so hard.
with the lady that cleans our house, we’ve tried every possible way to communicate with her, treating her with the respect that is an expectation in america. with the other people whose houses she cleans, there is a class divide, but with us there is none. what we're starting to put together is that the only way that she’ll not take advantage of how nice and respectul we are is if we tell her very sternly what is expected. its a catch 22 for sure. this week has been especially disheartening. it sucks but it really is the culture here. magic bus somehow found a way to communicate with the kids that is respectful, engaging, and effective, and that inspires me and gives me hope. i don't know how they did it but they really should mass produce it and sell it in a bottle. change will take a long time. people are set in their mindset and that’s something that’s going to take a long time to change.
things are slow and painstakingly inefficient. a week and a half ago my cell phone was pick-pocketed on the train. very luckily the police caught the woman as she was trying to take someone else's pocketbook. when i went to the station that night, there were five people involved in writing the complaint out, and it took them over an hour to write it out. the next day, i sat at the courthouse for 4 and a half hours to be told to come back on tuesday. on tuesday they said that they'd need the phone for the case day itself and so they couldn't give it back to me, but to come back the next day that way they could set the case day sooner because "they didn't know i was leaving so soon." frustrating, yes. i can't even put it into words. and clearly i didn't want to spend my last two weeks in india in some court room where the process was beyond any hope of comprehension. and if the process is this confusing and inept for a 1300 rupee cell phone, i can't even imagine what it would be like for something that matters, when people's lives and livelihoods are at stake, like murder cases, or brothel raids.
the inefficiency, slowness, and set mindset is what makes living here and working for social change so frustrating. at the same time, the degree of poverty and work to be done make it hard to justify doing work anywhere other than a third world country.