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I have no idea what I feel about India’s big cities like Delhi and Mumbai.
It’s been weeks since I was in Delhi, but I still can’t get my head around it, or think of anything coherent to say about my experience.
I feel like I’ve seen the future again. I felt that way in California too. Different versions of our collective future. What we are heading towards. As a species. As an ecosystem.
My friend Amit and I spent hours talking about my experiences in Delhi. He has spent most of the last ten years traveling the world. He understands India in a way I don’t – from the inside out.
He helped me see how the machinery of India is inextricably linked to the machinery of the world economy. How the technology and power of California is driven by the same forces that bind India into poverty.
Of course I understood this concept intellectually. It’s something else to walk around inside it.
In Mumbai I saw little kids living with their families in the gutter.
In Nashik I think I saw a dead person on the street one night. I’m not sure. I was too afraid to pull aside the filthy blanket and look at the face underneath.
Delhi is the scariest place I’ve ever been. It felt like the burning edge of the world.
The streets were constantly engulfed in noise, animal droppings and people. People worked and slept in every crevice of the city. A dense orange cloud of smoke hung over the city. Ravens flapped through the smog and fed on the garbage in the streets.
When I told Amit how I felt in Delhi he said something like:
“there are the same traps in Delhi as there are in every city in the world. In the west you’re used to having many things veiled. The difference here is that you can see clearly. You can see the suffering. You can see the scarcity. Every part of humanity is visible here.”
Last month, when the Indian government declared the cash currency worthless, millions of people went bankrupt.
The stated intention of the treasury was to strike a blow against corruption and tax evasion. The reality was that the poorest people in India – people like farmers, street sellers and labourers – who make their living in the cash economy, lost everything.
The few thousand rupees the farmer managed to save through the season to buy seed to plant next year’s crop; gone. The bundle of thousand rupee notes stashed under the mattress to get you through through in case your daughter gets sick or you lose your job; gone.
The rich and powerful found ways to launder their cash. The poorest just got poorer.
I live a simple life without many material things but I don’t consider myself poor.
Wealth and poverty are very relative concepts, but if the government decides overnight your money isn’t worth anything and you are struggling to feed your family, you know for certain you are poor by any standard.
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