Children of My God

This year I wanted to travel in the countryside in India. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to experience - maybe I just wanted to feel their life. Life had become so mechanical in the US that unknowingly I had trained myself to shift from one emotion to another without even feeling the previous one.

I headed out to 3 villages, all within a radius of a couple 100 Kms from Bhubaneswar, the capital city of the Eastern State of India, Orissa. These villages were in remote areas, several Kms away from the closest paved road. I remember bouncing and jerking in my dad’s fancy Japanese car as we made our way to the village. It wasn’t until a few hours, when I was completely sore in areas that I did not even know existed, I realized I had many more muscles in my body than what Billy Blanks claims in his Taebo videos.

After 50 years of independence and several governments, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the basic living conditions in the villages of Kalan, Kantilo and Pattamundai were better than what I had expected. Being an eternal optimist, I was happy with the amenities they had rather than what they lacked. It was one thing to intellectually understand that most Indian villages lacked basic sanitation and people use open fields for bio breaks but, it truly was another experience when I had to do it myself, day after day with the constant fear of a snake jumping out at me from behind the bushes. It was one thing to understand that cow dung is used as antiseptic in villages and another to walk bare feet on wet/freshly smeared cow dung on the baked mud floors.

In Kalan, I was introduced to this family of 3 children; all 3 physically challenged – they were deaf and dumb since birth. Their father, an old man in his 60’s pleaded to me to find them a job that could fetch them 2 meals a day. Having worked in the Silicon Valley where every situation has a Plan A, Plan B and Plan C; I sat there dumbfounded unable to find a Plan A for these physically challenged children in a village economy that barely generated any income.

As I walked back from their house desperate and frustrated at my inability to find the kids a constant source of income, I chuckled at their parting gift to me – a sketch of myself – was I really that beautiful?

The next day as I mingled with the crowd and walked around the village trying to be one of them, I realized, had I not colored my hair to keep up with the latest fashions in the US, there was probably a chance I could have mingled with the crowd and not have children in dozens follow me wherever I went. On second thoughts, maybe not! My Oriya (local language in the Eastern state of Orissa, India) speaking skills needed a lot of improvement. I knew they could tell - I got tongue-tied one day trying to find the Oriya equivalent of the word ‘problem’. I thought since we bump into ‘problems’ every day, everybody knew what a ‘problem’ was.

Day 3: as I sat there trying to understand the village economy I watched the 3 children walk up to a house where they had mastered the art of extracting silk from the silk worm. For 8 hours of work, 6 days a week, they were being paid Rs.120 /month($2.5/mo) per child– not enough to buy them 2 meals a day; short Rs.150/mo only. I haven’t found a way out, to date to get them that additional Rs150/mo. They aren’t looking for funds from the US; they want to earn their living.

Then I met Ranju, a 16-year-old girl who taught at a pre-school and who was now struggling to meet ends since the funds for the pre-school had dried out. In a conservative Indian village where women are expected to be behind close doors, everyday she rode a cycle(bike) to the nearest town. The local tailoring shop in the town measured the fabric down to the inch before handing it over to her and also provided her sewing needles and thread. She sowed 40 ‘sayas’ (skirt worn under the saree) a day and earned Rs.1.50 per skirt. I asked if she worried about her non-conservative ways and she said, ‘Where’s the time to worry?’ I met Chinmaiee, another 16-year-old teacher at the same pre-school who had managed to find a living selling curry powder door to door since the school had closed down. I met 2 more, 5 more and then had met 30 other girls who were determined to survive; very skeptical of me – was I another one from the numerous NGO’s or government agencies promising to change their lives until they saw the last of me as my car sped away from their village kicking off a cloud of dust?

I went in without knowing what I wanted to bring back with me, but I came back understanding that these children didn’t require any validation for their existence. While I looked for constant validation from family, friends, and society, even life wasn’t ready to validate their very existence.

As I sat on my honches with the village kids watching a cow deliver and nurture her newly born calf, I realized, I needed more courage to live a life where I was not a spouse, a daughter or a friend than being one!