India Day 3-4

After we left the Taj at sunset it was time to head back to Delhi, so it was train station visit number two. We knew a little bit more of what to expect after our first visit but nothing could have prepared me for what I faced. 

On the bus we were all given our boxed dinners.  We were told this train station was much smaller than the last but that there would probably be homeless/hungry people.  Most of us put half of our dinners in our bag to eat later and carried the other half out to give away.  We got off the bus and immediately there were around 20 children around us and three adults. The children ranged in age from probably 4-12 and were all extremely skinny and obviously hungry and some had cleft lips.  One of the men’s legs were deformed and behind his head and one had feet that were literally the size of watermelons, he was in a wheelchair and his feet were propped in, it was the kind of thing people see on youtube and gather around in awe but here I stood about a foot away staring into the eyes of the man whom these feet belonged too.

We all tried to hand out our food as evenly as possibly making sure everyone got something and it was relatively easy because as soon as a child got some food they would run about 15 feet away from everyone else and would eat it as fast as they could.  I don’t know what everyone else did but I knew I couldn’t have food in my bag and not share it so I ended up giving away my entire dinner, giving my juice and a snack to the man with the big feet because most people were focused on the children.

We went into the train station and it seemed that we were left alone and could relax. A tiny boy came up to me and started motioning he was hungry. I looked around and there was no one else so I brought him over one of the stalls and bought him a snack.  The food was cheap and he was so hungry, how could I justify having  backpack full of electronics and not buy him a bag of chips?  As soon as he ran away though, two more boys appeared. I bought double the snacks, one for each of them, but then one took all of it and ran away and the other boy started to cry, so I bought him a snack too.

More and more starving children kept appearing and then disappearing one by one and I tried to make all of them happy but I couldn’t, I would give one a bag of chips and another would cry and on and on, it is so heartbreaking to see the kids we see in pictures face to face and how can you say no?

The hardest part is that in the long run, I don’t want to help the system. Me being there and giving them food perpetuates the cycle, if they know that they can get food there, however little, they will be there trying to get food and not in school or doing other things that will help them sustain a life in the long run, I can give them 200 calories today but I can’t do it forever, and even worse is that if you give these kids money they don’t even get to keep it, they have to give it to their “pimps” who will sometimes even deprive them of food or rough them up so they look more beat up and foreigners will give them money.  I knew I shouldn’t give them anything but I’m just not the kind of person who can see someone starving and know that I have never been and never will be without food and not do what I can to help them.

We were there for about 40 minutes and it was extremely overwhelming.  I tried to help as much as I could but eventually it just got to be too much and I broke down and just cried into another girl on my trips shoulder, I don’t even know her name, I just couldn’t do it anymore, I couldn’t help, and she suggested I buy a magazine to take my mind off of it but how I even consider buying cosmo when people can’t even eat all around me?

It was extremely rough and I will never forget the faces of those children in the train station. Luckily there were some good moments too. When we were at the Taj we took a group picture and one kid in my group gave his picture to one of the boys who LOVED it. He carried it around pointing out all of the people in the group and getting excited.  There was one girl there who I gave a bindi too and let her pick out the one she wanted and she picked out the smallest, most suble one and let me put it on her forehead.  When we left to get on the train I felt a tap on my shoulder and almost didn’t want to turn around and have to tell someone else I couldn’t give them more food but it was the girl with a huge smile on her face waving good-bye.  Looking back, I think giving her that did more good than anything I gave anyone else that day.

We all got onto the bus mentally and physically exhausted and passed out pretty much instantaneously. This was one of the nicest trains in India and it was pretty nice. All of the seats reclined and they brought us bottled water and ice cream.  When we got to Delhi a few hours later someone shook me out of my sleep and we all piled off the train and into a bus to take us to a hotel.

We stayed at the Delhi Ramada which was the polar opposite of the train station.  It was a GORGEOUS hotel.  I think it’s where all of the Americans and Europeans stay.  Everyone else ran off to the bars but I just wanted to curl up in bed and relax.  I had internet, some room service (I know, the irony, but I hadn’t eaten since lunch) and finally got a good nights sleep.

The next day was pretty uneventful. We went to the Bah’ai temple which I think I already wrote about, did some more shopping and went to a marble factory, I think, and then went to the airport to fly back to Chennai.  We got back to Chennai pretty late and I went to sleep.