My opinion (and Garry’s) is quite different to what other people seem to say about “Incredible India”. To date, Garry and I have not done any extensive travel in Asia or any 3rd world countries, so this visit has come as a bit of a shock for us. India seems so much worse than Asia in terms of poverty and filth. It is NOT my holiday destination of choice. Garry is waiting for this assignment to be over as he is not happy here either. Delhi is not a very nice city and can wear down the hardest of hearts and weary the most experienced of tourists. There are still glimpses of the old British Raj in some of the neglected city buildings. Connaught Place must have been beautiful once upon a time. Now it is dilapidated and dirty. There are empty flower pots around the cracked colonnades, which once would have been full of colourful flowers and are now just full of cigarette butts and trash. I get the feeling that perhaps the Indian people do not wish to be reminded of the time of the British Raj.
The embassy district looks more ordered and well loved behind tall imposing brick walls. The dirt is swept and the fences are high and well maintained. We think that a tourist coming here on a package deal, living in a nice hotel in this district, would have a very different impression to us. They would be picked up and ferried around. They would probably love India, enjoy India Gate and the Red Fort, enjoy a meal at one of the glitzy Indian restaurants, tour Chandi Chowk and sigh at the poverty from their air conditioned car and then leave for the next town on the itinerary. Living like a local is a very different story.
Firstly the contrast between rich and poor, new and old and clean and dirty is enormous. The poverty was jaw dropping and still is shocking to me. This must surely be due to the massive population. Delhi alone almost has the same population as all of Australia. So there are just too many people for the government to look after. Perhaps another reason may be because the rigid caste system of old has weakened and people from the lower castes are able to change jobs and move away from their traditional employment and their villages and flock to the city to make money. Of course this must be a good thing, but there are squalid slums everywhere. For us, it is just too confronting. No toilets or running water. The drains are sewers. It must be unbearable in summer when the temperature soars to 45 degrees and even higher most days ! It must be unbearable when the monsoonal rains come. Winter is bitterly cold up here on the plain. You can’t see the sun, ever, during winter in Delhi. There is a thick fog that covers the ground every day and it mixes with diesel fumes, factory exhaust and wood fires that keep the itinerant workers warm in their shanty towns and allow them to cook. Garry and I both say we are glad that we have experienced Delhi, as it makes us much more appreciative of what we have and we have pledged never to complain about our little first world problems ever again……
I can’t give to every beggar on the streets. They tap and scrape at the car doors and hold up babies covered in bloodied bandages. Many of the beggars have unspeakable deformities and disfigurements. It is said, that they are controlled by a pimp. As we approach every set of traffic lights, the driver locks all the doors. I can’t ignore it, but I can’t look at it either. I develop a middle distance stare as I sit in my car being driven along the roads. Don’t look I tell myself, just don’t look. It is also said that education is the way out of this mess. I am determined to find an organisation when I get home and donate some money to help educate the children of India. I can do this one small thing.
Garry tells me we will be living and working 30 kms out of Delhi in Gurgaon. It is a huge, smoggy, dusty city in the desert. As we approach the city I see huge neon bill boards. They are all powered by generators. There is an impossible tangle of electricity wires everywhere and the hum of generators mixes with the incessant car horns. This is a city that has grown too quickly. I see impossibly modern, space age business parks and slums side by side. There is virtually no infrastructure here. No clean running water, no sewerage, no drainage and the roads which should only be two lanes wide, now fit eight lanes of cars, buses, trucks, cows and even some camels in peak hour. There is a cacophony of noise. The car horns sound continuously. I see water being brought in on a truck and sewerage going out on another truck. One of Garry’s mates told him the drainage is indeed excellent in Gurgaon… it is called “evaporation”. I see starving, skinny cows everywhere. Their bones appear to hold up their leathery old skin like tent pegs. These cows are the only thing that stops the traffic. They forage about the road side debris looking for something to eat. Some sadly even eat the plastic bags that lie around. They are sacred, so no one will eat them, but no one feeds them either, so they wander the streets, eternally hungry.
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