Re-connecting...

  Mumbai, India
Thursday, November 2, 2006

Its 530pm on Day 3 and work ceases...I had agreed to be an intepreter for a Candian journalist, who was making a short series for a TV channel. Peter Silverman wanted to talk to the home-owners, see where they lived and bring their stories to Canadian audiences. I was sceptical at first, not wanting to intrude in the lives of these people and more over I didn't want be part of another sob story that distastefully depicted a one-sided story of the plight of poor Indian people...besides my Hindi has never been very good to being with! However the home-owners were very willing and its not everyday you get to be on TV, so I went along for the ride. I didn't realise how far-removed and de-sensitised I had become....the village was crowded, dirty, without roads or electricity, there was no sanitation or running water...I was no stranger to poverty, having grown up in India, but like many Indians, I had only seen these villages and people from the out-side - from buses, from trains, from the comfort of air-conditioned cars... Standing there in the dimming light, looking at a little shack of about 100 sq ft, held together by ropes and thatch, I wondered at how Tukkaram and Jijabai brought up 3 children in that one room shack???

Before their Habitat home..

I became uncomfortably aware of the flies and mosquitoes, the dirty water, the livestock living with people in close quarters....and yet talking to the children I realised that they were not sad and unhappy. They knew they were poor, but how can you miss what you have never had?? I grew angry as I found out that the village panchayat (or local municipality) were pocketing money from the government and had not built a road or laid a finger to clean the villages...how could I help???

kids looking at us..

Another village..another community of a 1000 people - we were visiting Sundarabai and her family: 13-15 people living under one roof along with the cows and goats..a farming community dependent on their annual harvest. The Canadian volunteers were mesmerised and struck at what they were seeing and hearing. The women spent 2-3 hours every day just bringing water to their homes. I was heartened to learn that Sundarabai's son was now making 2000 rupees by installing cable TV in the village!

Visiting a village

Children went to school and women had equal representation in the local panchayat....everyone over 18 had a right to vote and I got the sense that people here were enterprising and wanted to make their lives better! One of the boys proudly proclaimed that he was a graduate...I felt a little more at ease leaving that village. I hoped that this side of India would also come to light too..that people, no matter how poor, are not living in self pity. They too are aspiring and are slowly but surely moving forward...
I also learnt that Habitat does not help the poorest of the poor - it cannot help these people because Habitat does not believe in giving hand-outs. It wants to enable and to empower..but it does not believe in charity. So for those families without breadwinners, without a stable income...a Habitat home is out of reach. They can only look in vain to the Indian government and people like you and me..sombering thoughts...Tomorrow, I would be building with renewed purpose.