My first 22 Days in India - incredible genorsity, joy, and poverty
I walked away, covered in paint, filled with joy, and bursting at the seems of my now not so flexible shorts with a full belly which, if poked, you might end up with a not so joy filled surprise coming out of either end.
We had been celebrating Holi, one of the biggest festivals in India, with a local family who invited us in.
You go crazy covering each other with paint, celebrate happiness, and eat an alarming amount of food.
That’s correct, uncle serving in the kitchen, I will take my 4th plate proudly and NOT wipe plates 1 through 3 embedded in my beard, mouth, and generally all over my body.
I was laughing ready to put some of the final paint on friends, until a kid on the street came up, hands open, begging for a packet of the coloured powder.
He couldn’t even afford the 20 rupee (20p) price to get to play with other kids. He was one of the many, many left out of this festival of joy.
Despite having some of the most fun I’ve ever had, being included within a familyś celebrations, I was suddenly reminded of how many people were excluded not by choice.
2 sides of a difficult coin
This contrast sums up my last 2 weeks travelling in India.
On the one hand, I’ve experienced some of the most amazing generosity, kindness, and fun I’ve ever had.
At the same time, I’ve been surrounded by poverty and difficult situations, helping me appreciate how much privilege I, and most people in the West, really have.
Road map
In this blog post, I want to try and share this chaotic, incredible, aggressive toilet visiting time that has been India.
While I dont want to be too serious and highlight the amazing parts, I would be doing you, and the truth, and injustice unless I acknowledged the harsh reality of poverty that is unavoidable here.
Iĺl split this into two parts, focusing on the wonderful differences, and the more difficult reality.
The wonderful attitudes and views on life
- Unbelievable generosity
- Limitless fun
The reality of poverty
But lets try and have some fun still... India style.
The generosity
Holi is a hindu festival which celebrates love and the bringing in of joy, the lowering of barriers between enemies, and is an excuse to throw coloured powder into your friends eyes and mouth.
We spent Holi at a local families house whom we happened to run into in the street. We joined in on some cricket, which is fair to say we smoked these fools...
although I didn’t reallly know how to play so I assumed their laughing at me was really a self-directed laugh at their shame for getting beat so badly by this skinny white boy rolling through...
Yeah.
But the cricket was only the beginning.
Becoming family
As people coming into their space, experiencing their culture, they showed us generosity like I have never expereinced in my entire life.
They brought us into their home for tea and were sharing all about Holi, and invited us to their specal celebrations.
Not only did they invite us for the experience, but they brought us to the front of fetivals where 10,000 people were attending. We stood singing and dancing on the main stage.
Above all it semed they wanted to share the time with us and have us be a part of it. They encouraged us to dance, they cnourgaed us to clap and sing, they encourgaed us to eat, be welcome, come on stage
Dancing like we had brain aneurysms was seen as a positive thing.
They came with such an unbelivably, mind-boggling open heart, and just saw that as the way things are.
At the end, having been blown away from days of being shown someone’s culture, and getting to be a part of their family, they seemed puzzled and asked why?
Well, for everything, I said
“It’s my pleasure. Thank YOU”
In the UK, if a foreigner walked into our street, many places would not only not welcome them into their home, but would get the metaphorical mega-brush out, trying to shew them out the street, and country.
People view others that look different with fear, and want to keep their culture and things to themselves.
Being here’s showed me the opposite. This is taking what you have and doing evrything you can to share it with others, because it brings you joy to do so
A different operating system
At home, it so often feels that people don’t want to do things to help you because itś taking away from their time. I feel myself doing this too.
Maybe I will give this person a quick solution to their problem, or give them a quick piece of advice on what they should do when travelling, so I can get back to what I am doing.
Here, people will make you a priority.
Rather than you being a distraction from their world which they need to quickly get done so they can return, people go out of their way to help you. the very act of helping brings immense joy, and people work so hard to do it.
Perhaps helping people, strangers, friends, family, isnt the chore we so often feel it is.
If people here can take so much joy, and dedicate themselves fully, to trying to help someone in need, can we take some similar joy?
Choosing generosity for impact
It shows me the power we have. By showing people generosity, and kindness, and wanting to share something of yours, to show them something new, it can make someones day, month, year, more.
Their generosity changed my perspective on India and has been the highlight of my trip.
- can we choose to start making other peopleś lives better by going above and beyond what we are used to?
- Can we just want to show someone something beautiful?
- Why not try and welcome people into our family and share all we can with them to make them happy too?
Here, thatś the basic operating system. I think my software needs updated. Ive been digging in too many dark corners of the web because my operating system is full of virsuses and faulty, degrading systems.
Not sure if I can go to computer shop for a clean-out so easily though.
Fun loving light-heartedness
God man... itś hard to be serious here sometimes.
I just get here and around about, some set of much greater happiness - people may have far less than we do, yet when I celebrated Holi, every man, child, old woman, and stray dog was buzzing. they were all adancing around and having fun.
All such smiles. And everyone being so wlecomign just having this happiness and joy, completely sober too, is something that I do not have at home
We have to get drunk and go out to have big celeberations all together like this, it's so much harder.
There was no sense of feeling awkard when dancing. I was actively encourgaed by
People on the street - you smile at them, and it's a big smile. They welcome you into the restaurant, and want you to be there. They welcome you into their home and are happy to have you.
The small things
Even the food forces you to be let go. Its just these massive, delicious, sit down meals. No need to rush.
And if itś THIS good, how can you not enjoy it?
One yoga teacher we had was talking on about enjoying life and being happy. I asked him
Are you happy?
Of course! I have gulab jamun
Gulab jamun is this oh so delicious sweetie. It teaches me not that we somehow place all importance on having sweeties, but maybe that we need to really appreciate the small things a lot more.
Perhaps thats the happiness we search so hard for.
Why so serious?
I think it's helping me understand that the serious filter that we place on life isn't necessarily the only way we need to go through life.
Seeing older people dancing and having fun, and everyone being a part of that, extends my view of how you can enjoy time with all generations and have fun with people regardless of who they are,
Even though we didn't know what we were doing, and they didn't really know who these aliens were, we could still communciate through laughing and imitating the classic hand twists and shopping cart filling style indian dancing.
Enjoy for the sake of life
Its not that they don’t acknowledge the difficulties in life, but people dont feel the need to be so serious all the time. Just dance, laugh, and have some good food. thereś this attitude which forces you to let go a little bit and reconsider approaching life.
When we have our friends around us, with good food, with laughing and music, can we not just try and have some fun right now?
we didnt even need to know people or those around us. thereś just an attitude adopted to try and enjoy life more, in face of the difficulties.
Limitless fun
in the west and in the UK we start to as we get older belive we can somehow not have as much silly zany fun, dancing and signing around without a care in the world. age and the progression in life cannot define your ability to have fun.
It was almost the older people telling us young ones to chill out more and enjoy life while we have it.
This level of welcoming of all people, to both give what you have (even if it's little), and to do your bes to encourage other people to let loose and have fun (even if it's briefly), to help all people live more fully (and with a fuller belly) and with a little more joy.
while it is so much having your belly so full, and enjoying everyones company, not everyone has this pleasure.
The reality of poverty
While this family howed extreme generosity in sharing their culture, food, and even money with complete strangers they had just met, surrounding us was children who on the street might not be able to have food.
It's amazing because we can travel around and see india, and apprecaite how "cheap it is", with food ranging from 60p for a substantial meal (including second portions, which are non-negotiable), to 35 minute taxi rides that cost £1.50.
I now recongise hunger as simply whether there is actual space in my stomach for more food.
Yet, fr people living here this is not cheap living; itś regular living. Instead, these prices express how limited people can be in the choices they make, the life they can live, and the sort of expereinces they can have.
Looking back home
Just by growing up in the UK, I can go through school, if Im lucky, and get a job at a fast food chain, and earn roughly 9.50 an hour, with zero expereince.
While I may not be able to have the largest quality of life, I can perhaps save, have a flat, and go out with my friends and eat food.
And we might describe that job and salary as on the lower end.
What have I heard about people working here?
Some people wake up at 6am, work a 12 hour shift, and get paid 200 rupees.
Equivalent to £2 a day.
For grueling work, likely in the sun, perhaps serving rich tourists like us who have the luxury of travelling through and "living cheaply".
£2 a day, for a 12 hour shift, is equivalent to roughly 0.17p an hour. Or said differently, one of the lower paid jobs in the UK might pay 56 times the amount that an equivalent quality of job people earn here.
This is not to mention how high our salries can go, reaching into the hundreds of thousands a year for those fortunate enough to become educated.
While I don't mean to hit you over the head with numbers, putting some things into perspective here is quite stagerring. It helps understand why people may be so persisent with asking for money, with trying to raise higher prices, and with "scamming" us by making us pay £1-2 more.
I have to catch myself now haggling down someone for 50 rupees.
I am being wronged! An indian would only pay 100 rupees, not 150!
Thatś 50 pence. How insignficant to us, but can be a quarter of someoneś daily wage to others.
Now, have I been haggling down a Tuk Tuk driver from his inital price of 400 rupees to 200 rupees? Of course not!
I would be getting that sucker down to at least 100-150.
But now, I am reconsidering that perspective, and how paying extra and giving more is insubstantial to us, yet might be the morally better choice given the disparity we have in wealth.
Changing perspectives
Seeing such poverty and being around it though takes for a huge persepctive.
Can I go around so easily just leisurely enjoying my time and having cheap meals, when I am constantly surrounded by men, women and so many children begging for the money to afford a meal?
Being here and experienceing these people directly is helping showing me the real inequality, beyond the numbers.
I find it impossible to just enjoy myslef and see how I could travel full time. That would involve ignoring the immesne inequality and suffering here, and how I have a responsiblity to use this pirvelage to help other people.
What about you?
While I may haev talked about the numbers here, to give some perspective, I can't rememebr the last time a maths lecture enticed anyone enough to jump into action.
Rather, I encourage you to come see this for yourself. Go to a place that you are uncofmrtable with, and where you know theres greater poverty.
Or if at home, perhaps open your eyes more to how those around you and within our own country might be living.
What opportunties do we have, that others might just not have simpy based on whre they were born?
What can we do to change these things?
That I don't know. and will hopefully do some research and actually action upon.
To conclude my first 3 weeks in India I have seen unimaginable generosity, which has changed my view about how much someone can give to others. we can not only take immense joy and pleasure in sharing with others, but perhaps we can consider how that can change someoneś life.
with friends, sweeties, and good food, India invites us to not take things more seriously than they already are. We can try and live as India does, extending this letting go to not caring so much when dancing around, to try and savour the time with people more while we have it.
Yet, still so many arent able to enjoy this. Part of being here and getting to experienee so much highlights the privelge we have in the west. Just because I can love the gulab jamun doesnt mean everyone in India can too.
When we travel and work, perhaps lets try and open our eyes to the reality of those around us, and not be so sucked into our own world that we fail to see the immense inequality we find in each incredibel experience we have.
being here makes me want to set my intentions strong to do something to try and help others even more.
But lets have a big meal first too.
and a sweetie after <3