Poverty, Astrology and Cricket

If I have found three omnipresent aspects to India they are poverty, astrology and cricket.

The poverty hits you like the pollution in Delhi. In big cities, almost everytime your rickshaw stops there is an assortment of men, women, children, many without limbs, or suffering from some debilitating ailment.... they are very close, asking for ruppees, indicating their need for food moving their fingers from their opposite hand's palm to their lips. At first it is striking; the intensity and magnitude of the number of people you experience in poverty is a shocking assault. It then moves to a hard-to-accept-reality of the day to day existence in India.. Finally it moves to something that you notice and experience, but with a tacit understanding that if you're going to make it outside of your guesthouse past 10am that you have to protect yourself by focusing on other things.

The poverty is of an intensity that you don't see in parts of the western world. Never do you see and over-weight person in poverty in India. You easily see that the poverty that exists is at a level far lower than in developed countries. It is about getting food of any kind on the 'table.' There are no creature comforts.

What accompanies much of the poverty is the trash. Disposal of refuse is not what of India's strongpoints from what I can tell. Some have told me that it is cultural, pulling from the foundations of karma and reincarnation. I have come to think however, that it has more to do with the country's incredible efficieny with which almost every aspect of any trash is utilized. Don't get me wrong, by all accounts I have witnessed, India has a trash problem. Trying to find a trash can anywhere is like trying to find a beer at a tea-totelers' wedding... there just aren't any. However, the cycles that the trash goes through is amazing. There are very few elements of pile of garbage that are not reused in some way in the vast Indian society. I once threw an empty water bottle into a large wheel-barrow that a man was pushing filled with hundreds, neigh, thousands of similar plastic water bottles... as I did, he stopped, put out his hand and demanded "backsheesh!!" (which is Hindi for tip...) I stood a tad dumbfounded, and gave him 5 ruppees... at which point he said what is probably one of 5 English words he knew and said "TEN!!" - I smiled and said "no", laughing at yet another example of a 'request' for backsheesh.

In parts of any city you will find the poor (genearlly lowest caste) going through the garbage and utilizing an amazing portion of that which has been discarded. I was told by a man I befriended that many a person's full living is made by scavanging the useable elements from the trash of others in Indian society. There are entire communitites that exist outside middle class suburbs subsisting only on that neighborhoods' trash. This is done on a more tremendous scale by the lower elements of the "Untouchables" caste known as "Rag pickers"

Following is a quote that I read that I think aptly describes the feeling of being a Westerner in the midst of the poverty and beggars of India. In case you were wondering I am VERY MUCH a westerner, (I realize this provides many of you with a lot of fodder to clog the comments box.. please see my blog re. Rishikesh and enlightenment and then read the comments)):

"This is a place where the mundane becomes eternal, where the visitor has to come to grips with beggars and the meaning of life. What should you do? Does giving encourage? Is it a duty, as the Muslims say? Can you pretend to be Christ? Every time you are approached is unique: you give out of pity, guilt, sometimes love, duty, exasperation, disgust, haste. You finger the wad of rupees in your pocket, wondering about your destiny. Then a filthy beggar boy, whom you've just rejected, smiles at you and melts into the crowd, blessing you in your selfishness. Patterns of thought and belief crumble." - James O'Reilly and Larry Habegger, Merle Haggard and the Ambassador

As for Cricket: everywhere you turn there is a pickup cricket match.. in the night darkened streets of McLeod Ganj, in the litter strewn dirt paths of Jaipur, in the sandy parks of Kochi... if there is a group of boys together, and they are not oogling western women travelers with their "horrified horny" approach, then they are playing cricket. I still can't figure the game out, but it's everwhere...I know there's a "century" something, a "castle", a "half castle", wickets, bats (I think.. that might be my word) and a scoring system that I don't understand that can prolong games up to a week in length. (this should provide good fodder to anyone that complains that football games last too long...)

You pick any Indian paper and it has two things (depending on the day)... Cricket scores and Bollywood updates (think People/Star/Us magazine Indian-style). Indian movies and music has India just stepping it's toe into the waters of western-style entertainment. You will not find a man and woman kissing in any Indian movie, but you will see wonderful displays of overemoting and kitche song and dance romance scenes.

I have also found the wedding classifieds to be humorous... While Indian movies are very much about love and courting and the dynamics of more western relationships, India is still rooted in it's long traditions of arranged marriages and gender roles. Most of the time when I start to get to know someone and I ask how many brothers and sisters they have, their answer only mentions brothers. It was enough to make me think that no one ever had any sisters. The male child is definitely the child of choice. Female infanticide is still very common with 47 girls being born to every 53 men. I believe that things are changing in this regard, but I have been told that it will be a long time before anything resembling gender equality reaches outsdie the biggest cities.

While I am firmly rooted in my belief of a "love" relationship and marriage, I have come to better understand the premise of the arranged marriage, especially when undestanding the role of extended family in India, the respect that children generally have for parent's decisions and discretions and the role that Vedic Astrology plays in any decision. Whether or not two people are a match, what day and what time their wedding is, is very much dependent on the Jyotish or Indian Astrologer (among many things)... that is also why you will find so many wedding on the same day and during a similar time of year (it's not because the flowers are blooming, I assure you.)) Astrology plays a tremendous role in familial decisions that are made in India.

Back to Cricket... another great quote follows:
"Sociologist Ashis Nandy, who has written a book on cricket said, 'It's an Indian game that was mistakenly brought by the British. It's an unpredictable game where the variables are so many, where there are negotiations with fate, and we are playing not with an opponent but with our own destiny. That clicks with the Indian self-conscience, the South Asian way of looking at the world and our own fate.'"

India has been called an impenetrable culture for westerners, and I am beginning to understand why. However, it is that impenetrable aspect that makes it an incredible place to visit. I have determined that you don't vacation in India, you adventure in India. The north is incredibly different from the south, and the east from the west. The spiritual depth of the country begins right at the surface; more than anything else, that is the factor that has made this trip so fascinating.