Well my time here in Delhi is coming to a close. I think I’m happy about this. There are many things I will miss about India—it has been my life for the past three months. Things have become routine. I’ve gotten to know the best places to get chai, some of the best places to eat, and I’ve met some of the best people I’ve ever had the priviledge of knowing. The thought of leaving, at times, causes me to tear. Three months can sometimes feel like a lifetime.
However, there are things I crave back in Canada—things I never considered a luxury while I was there. I long for fresh air. I long to be ignored and not stared at. I crave physical activity and the ability to run in the open air. I crave the comfort of my bed, and the ability to sleep with the window open without fear of malaria or denge fever. I crave solitude. I long for clean clothes because as hard as I try washing my clothes by hand just doesn’t cut it. I also long to be cool… even cold. NOW that’s something I never thought I would ever say!
My experience in Delhi has been invaluable, and the gratitude I feel to have had this opportunity is beyond my capability to express. Through this experience I find myself questioning everything, and wanting to learn as much as I can about the issues that stifle the development of countries like India—these countries where incredibly intelligent, kind, warm, and hospitable people live and work every day.
These people deserve to have the freedoms that we in Canada experience.
I read the papers here and it seems surreal. Stories of Kashmir where people are fighting, killing, dying, and suffering every day. Stories of the city I have lived in for three months where laborers toil night and day in blistering heat for the commonwealth games earning about INR 140 per day—about $3 a day. I see women with a four to five layered pyramid of bricks on their heads as they transport them to the workers. It hurts my head—and my heart—just looking at them.
The stories are endless. The stories are heartbreaking. More and more stories fill the pages of the newspaper every day. All these things are now happening in my neighbourhood. I am no longer a sea away where distance enables me to shake my head in pity and then dismiss the tragedy because it is not my own. Now all I have to do is walk down the street to see with my own eyes the suffering of the poor.
Someone once told me, after I returned from Uganda a couple of years back, that being there, and seeing the things I saw, gave me the unique privilege to and duty to do something to better the situation.
I have a duty to do something. I only pray that I can fulfill that duty.
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