Two Trips to India in a Day

Off we went at 8am down the 11km car-battering feeder road that connects the school to the main road from India to Thimphu. It's a miracle cars survive more than a month on these ripped up rough and stony tracks that have been gouged miraculously out of the side of the mountains. Phuensaling is another 46km away down a remarkably twisty-turny, back and forth, precipitous jungle road. It cries out for a motorbike and a sunny day. Can I justify buying a bike? The freedom would be immense. Risk factors would magnify.

Phuensaling is different. It's a border town. It's got the edgy feel that border towns have and a fence that cuts right through the middle of town like The Wall in old Berlin. One side is India, the other Bhutan. I can't go into India because of the visa situation, but it seems that at this particular delineation of states, restrictions are... flexible. My principal assured me that curtains are cheaper in India, so to India we went with the assurance that we could always 'talk' if there was a problem. So I went to India. Twice. In one day. Bizarre. And for curtains, of all things. In the gatehouses, the military were idling and asked no questions of the parade of faces that passed by them. Not even mine, and I guarantee it, mine stood out. No tourist would come here unless he was overlanding to the heart of Bhutan, in which case they'd be going full pelt because it takes so long to get anywhere here. They don't measure miles; they measure days.

The differences between India and Bhutan were huge and immediately in your face. The cows in India, for one, plodding sacredly around the markets. The shop-keepers. The variety of goods. The beggars. The destitute. This difference slapped me sideways, though I should perhaps have expected it.

Whilst waiting for my principal to finish buying shoes, a young woman and three children approached me, all filthy in rags and hungry looking. One of the kids had sores of an indeterminate nature erupting from his 5 year old face. I'd already had young children clutching my arm or holding my leg insistently, their faces desperate. And the crutchless guy with the amputated leg rolling through the sea of feet wit his begging bowl. I was absorbing India when the family approached me, just standing there like there's a culture-hose on me and letting it smack me in the face until I got used to the pressure. I try not to give money to beggars, but I''d never been faced with such destitution, so I reached into my pocket without thinking twice and pulled out 20 Ngultrum. I confess I was pleased it was neither bigger nor smaller than that sum, but I later found out it was a fortune of charity. Once she had it, the mother took the child with the erupting growths by the hair and pulled his head back so I could see his torn up face more clearly and told me there was no doctor for the child. 'No doctor.' The child's face was pressed towards me, not violently, but necessarily. I was the big target. The walking ATM, and I'd already spilt some cash.

I thought many things during the ten minutes or so that I stood there waiting for my principle to finish buying shoes, with this desperate family in determined attendance throughout. I thought about how little would be required to lift them for even a short amount of time out of their struggle. Hunger is brutal and unforgiving. I thought about how little even a thousand Ngultrum would really do to change their circumstances. Any charity would be alleviative at best, palliative at worst. I thought about how many of these broken people there were in India and how quickly my pockets would be drained if I started opening them with serious intent.

When I was surface-grappling with the inevitable questions that India's brutal society raises, I remembered the story of Gautama and it made sense that his enlightenment had its origins in India. When Siddhartha left his palace to find the real world, he found these people and worse, the destitute, the cripples, the hungry, the filthy, desperate and dying. He realised that their unabated struggle and pain was not exceptional to the human condition; it was vivid form of what is a fundamental and universal aspect of the human condition – suffering. This realisation prompted him to give up all the trappings of comfort and security (tools for temporary respite of suffering) to find a way to live with acceptance of the truth of suffering that was at the same time neither unbearable nor depressing. Quite a challenge.

In a knee-jerk reaction that had its root in undefined guilt, I too felt the urge to throw open my bag and let go my stupid possessions. All the junk I owned: the laptop speakers; the ice gauntlet snow gloves; the smart shoes; the climbing knife; the headtorch; the kindle; the mp3 player; the hardrive; the 'stuff'. What value did any of them have in the face of this suffering? Then I felt the anger. How dare you stand there and make me accountable for the poverty that exists in the world? Who are you to take the 20 Ngultrums I gave and consider it not an act of charity but a free pass to press down harder and more unfairly on my feelings. How dare you? And then... of course! I am the rich one, standing here in my soft-shell trousers with my western complexion and a bag full of stuff. What do I expect?

Looking away from the family and back into India I thought: 'how dare the crowd flow by these people like they're mere rocks in a river, slowly eroding them with their indifference'. What is it in the Indian culture that makes this scene possible? The caste system makes untouchables out of people that are born innocent. Is it an extreme interpretation of karmic reincarnation that allows for such indifference to suffering? The dogs in Thailand are treated badly because they are considered to be reincarnate ill-doers (the same belief is held in Bhutan but it obliges them to be compassionate – the dogs here have a dignity that they would never have in Thailand, even though the Butanese would rather live without them).

The final thought I had – this doesn't happen on the other side of the fence. The family wouldn't be allowed to suffer in this condition in Bhutan. The government wouldn't allow it. The people wouldn't allow it.

My trip to India shook me up and set me thinking in unanswered questions:

At what point does indifference become cruelty by consent? How is the systematic abuse of the poor different to other crimes against humanity? How can suffering to this degree be so institutionalised that it is no longer visible when it's right in front of your face?

Poverty of this kind and in this environment is dehumanising for both the poor and for the indifferent witness of their poverty, but I fear this statement may be a peculiarity of my middle-class western up-bringing that only permits a narrow and cloistered appreciation of the prevalence of poverty and of what it is to be human in this world.

The very last thought: the children at my school should see this place. Everybody should. Televised or reported poverty only exists in the mind – it isn't felt. Everyone should hold that desperate woman's eyes as she clutches at an arm and tells you that her disfigured and hungry child has no doctor. Why? Because when I put my head down on my fluffy down pillow it is still a truth of the world that she is there even if I can't see her, and if I can do nothing to alleviate her suffering or change the nature of life on this Earth, I can at least have gratitude for the pillow beneath my head. If everyone was truly grateful for something as simple as a pillow, a principle cause of inequality might disappear.