Housed in a home that is two bedrooms and many many gates behind a wall.
And of course in such places, one finds the place to wonder what is meant to be kept in and what out. From behind the gates we can't see the families that cook their dinners over open fires, hanging their their clothes over trees because they have nothing to put the nothing they own in. Just one pot, one pair of pants, one dollar a day to half full a stomach of what will never sustain the body or soothe the soul. And we cruise home in an autorickshaw and barter over ten ruppees, step inside and into cold showers, fill our room with the cool air of winters we were not able to carry with us but can buy even in an age of inflated electricity prices to make up for shortages. And all the rickshaws know we can pay more so they stop for us, knowing us to be foreign, accomplices with blond haired and blue eyes means big-bill-ed, and we too know we can pay more, think we should, but then what of everyone who can't.
But I am happy to be in this house that might never be my home, safe behind gates, cool in so much conditioned air that keeps the suffocation of selflessness at bay.
OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER
- bfa
- Although this blog details experiences had while studying at the University of Cambridge through a Fulbright Scholarship as well as at the American Institute of Indian Studies through a Critical Language Scholarship, it does in no way reflect upon the views of my funding source, the US State Department.