Below is a story I wrote whilst in India a while back now; it was going to be published as a chapter in a book called 'The India Experience', by an Indian travel company called 'Sodha Travels', but very sadly this book has now been indefinitely postponed due to insufficient funds for publishing...Hopefully they will manage to raise the funds in due time, but for the moment, please enjoy!
The Indian
Smile
As my plane flew into Mumbai late
on a November afternoon last year, I had no real concept or concerns about the
country in which I was about to spend the next three months.
I had backpacked around the world
before and found my way around the entire of Vietnam, taught underprivileged
children in a school in one of Mexico’s largest cities (Guadalajara, incase you’re
wondering) and navigated my way across China with an old school-friend. Nothing,
however, could have prepared me for the hustle and impression of organised
chaos as I moved through the arrivals section of Mumbai airport, nor the sheer
number of people, all of whom seemed totally unfazed by the small pandemonium
taking place around them.
During my taxi ride into the
island-city of Mumbai from the airport, I realised India was, well, just
different. Busier and more crowded than anywhere I had ever visited, it held an
allure and fascination that was perfectly foreign to me. I was immediately
seduced by the blurring night time cityscape and the winking planes losing
themselves in the velvety Indian sky above.
The more the rickety taxi pushed
along, sometimes with the traffic flow and other times seemingly against, the
more I realised that I had travelled to the country with very little knowledge
of Indian culture, its people, or their way of life. I had heard of the
infamous slums where the poor resided, but nothing could have prepared me for
the reality where the streets stretched out into row after row of slum
shelters. The flimsy huts were made from bamboo sticks, scraps of cardboard and
plastic with corrugated tin roofs, and seemed to house whole families. My
bedroom at home in London is probably bigger than four of those huts put
together. I could make out pinpricks of small street fires from outside the
shelters and at a closer glance, I noticed people huddled closely around them,
sticking their bare hands and feet almost into the flames to seek relief from
the cool night air.
I stayed in the southern-most
peninsula of Mumbai, Colaba, which was traditionally the city’s hub for wandering
travellers. However, I started to dread leaving my hostel each morning where I
would be greeted by a plethora of beggars, most of whom were crippled, blind or
desperately ill. Dirty-haired street children walked barefoot around the
streets in ragged clothes trying to appeal to the compassion of tourists for
money with their big round grown-up eyes. I reflected back to my own cushy
childhood of bedtime stories and hot meals and felt a warm shame creep into my
nourished and healthy body.
After a few days in Mumbai
though, I started to see past the caricature of sickness and poverty paraded
daily by the pavement dwelling beggars. One sunny morning I was walking back
from breakfast through a wide leafy street in Colaba and I noticed some street
children contentedly playing a game of cards on someone’s doorstep. Nearby some
blind beggars enjoyed a meal of fish and chai together. Nearly everyone I
passed, whether they be street children, beggars or street vendors would be
smiling – either at me or at each other, and they all wanted to talk to me.
These people all had one thing in common I realised – they all had big hearts
and happy faces. Their hands and feet may not be warm and their bodies
undernourished, but their hearts and souls were full and happy, which is more
than I can say for my own country’s state of Prozac-filled minds.
During my second week in Mumbai I
befriended the owner of a slum-hut. His name was Geet and he instantly laughed
off my concerns about their poor living conditions. Geet felt grateful to be
living here – this shabby sanctuary protected him from far worse fates. The
slum hut was surprisingly clean inside, and, although sparsely furnished, it
was clearly habitable and well-maintained. Geet’s next door neighbour Bhadra,
both a wife and mother of five young children, cooked us a simple but tasty
meal of rice, spicy dhal and homemade flatbreads in some gleaming tin pots
above a little fire, which we all washed down with hot, sweet slum chai. This
delightful little concoction was far more spicy and pungent than any of the
Indian food I had tentatively tasted in the blander tourist eateries. Afterwards,
I tried to give Bhadra money, a huge error which I only realised all too late.
Insulted, she told me in broken English that I was a guest and now a part of
the community in that slum, they didn’t want my money, they wanted my company.
That’s the thing about the Indian
slum community; they are a community of the tightest sort, where they support
one another so closely in order to survive. I have never seen such passionate
concern and love for one’s neighbours anywhere else except in the inspiring and
desolate areas of those tattered shelters.
Little by little, my scepticism
and hardened British heart started to slowly thaw during my time in India.
Every genuine smile I received - and I received at least fifty a day - was like
food to my poor and hungry soul.
Next to Mumbai, Delhi stands
strong, tall and towering in my memory. The Aladdin-like bazaars of India’s
capital could almost be another country in themselves, a behind-time fabled
country where you could imagine all sorts of magical and enchanting adventures
and stories taking place. India is of course, thousands of years old, and the
sights in Delhi, from the majestic Red Fort, to the vast gardens of the
splendid Humayan’s Tomb which demonstrate its crumbling opulence and wealth.
Walking down the Main Bazaar in
Paharganj, a seedy area in the north of Delhi, is a memorable assault on all of
the human senses. Smoking incense sticks poke out from random cracks in broken
drainpipes, while skinny humpy cows wander dozily past zooming motorbikes or auto-rickshaws,
their drivers beeping at everything and anything that may cross their path,
which in a street as busy as this one, is every two seconds. Stray dogs and
cats add to the mayhem and every patch of space on this long street is invaded
by some sort of wonderful chaos or Indian market store. Neat lines of pashminas
and bright rolls of coloured fabric melt into each other and hippy dippy shops
catered to the discerning dread-locked traveller float their wares of
fishermen’s trousers and tie-dye kaftans. Hundreds of people hum along their
own life stories here - amongst these are beggars, snake charmers, cooks,
astrologers, pimps and musicians. If I catch the eyes of any of these men or
women, they would return my gaze with that huge Indian smile I had by now grown
to look forward to as I woke up every morning.
Rush hour here seems to last
throughout the day and camels, hand carts, motorcyclists, pedestrians and
animals all clash into each other and miraculously, nobody gets hurt. Sweating
men with rake thin legs and buttocks of steel pull the three wheeled rusty
rickshaws through the human traffic on their bicycles. They hurtle long red strings
of spit onto the uneven road and unfortunate feet of anyone passing by. When I
looked closely, I noticed that nearly all of the shopkeepers’ mouths and teeth
were stained a maroon red, the same red that darkens the bullets of saliva
shooting out of the rickshaw drivers’ mouths. This is the magic of ‘paan’, a
fragrant-filled leaf that is consumed as a mouth-freshener and, as far as I was
concerned, was popular with Indians all over the north of the country.
The streets of this great dirty
Indian city made my return home to England to be an unexpectedly eerie
contrast. London, my home city, seemed more like a deserted toy-town where
everything ran like ordered clockwork. Dogs on leads padded obediently along
the empty pavements and cars seemed to positively glide silently along the
smooth even roads as though from some futuristic film set. Once a city I used
to describe as fast-paced, hectic and noisy, since my return from India in
January, I now see London as a quiet place where order remains paramount and
imagination is stifled.
What strikes me as most bizarre,
is how, for example, in Mumbai, an overpopulated slogging fervency of sixteen
million people, I never saw a street brawl or even a fight break out between two
drivers. Angry road rage in London however, a city at least twice the size of
Mumbai but with about half the population, is common, as are fights between car
drivers and muttered swearwords between hassled pedestrians. India is able to
live in its overly populated chaos without landing themselves in World War
Three because India is a land where the heart reigns and the smile is queen.
I now want a piece of that Indian
heart for myself, and what I have discovered I need since this trip, isn’t the
latest iPhone, or a job promotion or a new car, but a contentedness that comes
from within, rather than from external sources. And if all those huge families
with their tiny shrines in all those tiny slum huts has taught me anything,
it’s that you need more than just you to survive in this world. You need a
supportive family, a power greater than yourself to have faith in, and of
course, you need a great big smile.
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