India 2009!

Today, Michelle and I got to stand in front of one of the SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD! It’s just as beautiful in person as it looks in all the pictures. Angeli gave us a little bit of its history on the rickshaw ride there. A king (whose name I forget) built it as a tomb for his wife when she died in childbirth. He was later imprisoned in the Agra fort, which is across the banks of the Yamuna, and his only solace was that he could look out the window at the Taj Mahal, a memory of his beautiful wife, each day. She also told us how every laborer or architect who helped to create the Taj Mahal had their hands chopped off when they were finished, so that they could never recreate something as beautiful. And it really is that beautiful. I had once heard it called a “beautiful teardrop in the Indian landscape” or something like that, and now I finally understand the meaning of that phrase. It’s actually heartbreakingly beautiful when you understand what it was built for.

As we drew closer to the Taj Mahal, we could tell we were nearby because we started seeing other white people on the backs of rickshaws. We also saw camels pulling people along – the funniest thing was that the camels didn’t even register with us as strange for a few minutes. When we went to buy our tickets, we couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the price difference for Indians and foreigners – 20 rupees v. 750 rupees!! The security lines were also interesting – I almost got my flashlight taken away, because apparently a triple A battery has the power to blow up a building. I convinced the security guard to only take my batteries though and leave me with the flashlight. I need that for the train ride ;)

When we walked in through the gate, Michelle and I just kept grinning at each other. We were standing in front of the Taj Mahal!! It’s weird, but we both talk about how we’re still kind of waiting for it to sink in that we’re actually halfway around the world in INDIA. After staring at the outside for awhile, we walked inside to see the burial place and see the beautiful designs on all the walls…you can tell that the building was built to honor a woman. Then we walked out back, where we could see the Yamuna river. There were tons of children playing in the water…I’m not going to lie, I was so hot by that point that I wanted to jump in with them. We went and sat in the shade of the bulding for a little bit – we sat in the SHADE of the Taj Mahal!! – and Michelle and I decided to call Kathleen Blackney and leave her a message telling her where we were!! I got a little homesick just listening to her answering machine. A few Indian tourists also tried to get a picture with us, but luckily Angeli scared them away.

Afterwards we went and visited one of the souvenir stores, where we of course bought absolutely nothing because we don’t really want to bring any presents home for anyone. ..and a good hour and a half later, we caught a few rickshaws and headed home!

Highlight of the afternoon= Jumanji was playing on the TV. In Hindi. It was amazing. Afterwards, we napped until 5 – the afternoon siestas here are really wonderful. The heat just overwhelms you and so you just close your eyes and drift off to sleep until you cool off! Then we woke up and went shopping for a few hours. I think at one point we had literally every single pair of shoes in an entire store out on the table for Angeli, Grace, Michelle and I to try on. Chotu just shook his head at us.

When we got home, we somehow managed to cram everything we’d bought into our bookbags and piled into 2 rickshaws to head to the train station. Grace’s whole family lined the street to say goodbye to us as we left! The train ride itself was actually awesome – Michelle and I had such a good time hanging out with Grace, Angeli, and Chotu. This trip was amazing because it really gave us the chance to bond with them…they really feel like family now. We played about seventeen games of hangman and connect-the-dots, and we even made tentative plans with Angeli to visit the Himalaya mountains next weekend!! I think the funniest part of the trip was when Michelle noticed a man standing by the door of the train dressed in boxers, knee socks, and a long scarf. It made me and Michelle feel a lot better about how strange we know we look here J

I also had what I think was one of my saddest moments here as the train was pulling out of the Agra station. While I was sitting in the train in Agra, I jumped because I felt a small hand grab my elbow. I looked to the right and I saw that a small girl had reached her hand through the bars of the train window to grab me. Her palm was outstretched to beg – words cannot describe how much I have come to hate that gesture. I have seen children 2 years old with their little hands perfectly positioned to reach out for spare change and it makes me sick that they have had to learn that young to make a living that way. Its so hard when a child begs from you. You need to ignore them, because most likely they are controlled by an adult and whatever money you give them isn’t actually theirs to keep. I usually just try to look away, and keep telling myself that they’re only paying attention to me because they think I’ll give them money. It’s the only way I can deal with it – to pretend that even an 8 year old child only wants money from me. But this girl, I guess it was because she had touched me, which nobody on the streets has before – I couldn’t stop staring at her. A government official came and smacked her and she backed away from the window, but I still couldn’t stop staring. I kept telling myself it wasn’t fair to her to keep staring, because I was making her think that eventually I would give in and hand her some spare change. That’s why I thought she was staying. So, eventually, after a few minutes, I managed to tear my eyes away. About 10 minutes passed, and the train began to pull out of the station, and I looked back out the window. The guard had moved, but little girl was still there. She saw that my face had turned and she ran up to the side of the tracks and started waving goodbye to me. I know this sounds like a cliché scene from a movie, but I really cannot describe to you how much my heart broke when I saw that. The train was already moving way too fast and I was too far away from her to hand her any money…she knew that. But she wasn’t begging anymore. She was just waving at me, like she wanted to be my friend. I wanted so badly to jump off the train and pick her up and grab her and take her back to Allahabad, back to SOUP, where she could be safe and grow up knowing that she is important and loved and special. What an easy solution. It actually has made me realize one of the hardest decisions I’m going to have to make in my life. Who do I want to be: the person in the railway stations, picking up the children, caring for then, changing their lives? Or do I want to be the person who works to change things so that these children don’t even end up the railway stations in the first place?

Getting to know the children at SOUP has made me look at children living in poverty in a whole new light. It’s always heartbreaking to see a child in poverty, but it’s ten times worse when you work with children who once lived in those conditions. I think a lot of people, including myself make poverty easier to look at by making the people we are looking at strangers. I don’t know them, we tell ourselves, how can I possibly help them? It’s easier to forget someone that way. But now that I have met and loved children who have been found wandering around train stations by themselves, children who have been abused by their fathers and blinded by their mothers – I can’t forget, I feel like I know every single child on the streets personally, like they are another Kajal, another Rinky, another Pooja. These children deserve a better world than the one they were given.