MUMBAI, INDIA – A few of those pickup travelers and I were a downing some fine London Pilsner Ale in the old backpacker hangout pub, Leopolds.
We were discussing the ill travelers, the ones who want to make a lasting relationship with everyone they have a five-minute conversation with.
My fellow adventurers and I were discussing the mundane questions such as where are you from, where are you going next?
We were comparing funny travel stories. I shared my infamous Acapulco one that will bring on the chuckles and “Ohh, my God … he didn’t.” But then our talk turned to how seasoned travelers as ourselves become so desensitized to third world reality.
By now, I’ve seen all the all’s … the dilapidated shoulders of the stunted shoe fixer, the naked baby held by the bloodshot-eyed toddler just big enough to hold the starving infant. We’ve been discussing the sad reality, that it just doesn’t effect us newcomers and what America doesn’t understand. Much in the same way I’m sure paramedics become numb to those bloody sights.
All of us agreed that the 20 kilometer taxi ride from the airport into downtown was something that just can’t be prepared for.
The untouchable castes sleeping on baking dirt piles and children running in the crazy driving streets looking in the taxi backseats for the you’s and me’s. Still, it is so hard to keep that head down. Saying “NO!” to the hands held out and street corner lepers.
After a ferry ride out to Elephanta Island, I got bit by that bleeding heart vector.
A girl of 11 years came over to talk with me, but not like the other hasslers of “buy this, buy this.” She introduced herself as Siveata, and I introduced myself as Josh. She helped me find a bookstore to buy stamps and then asked if I would help her.
She said, “I want no money, all I ask is for some powdered milk or rice for my little sister and I.”
I resisted but about as whole-heartedly as if my elbow was connected to a toy rubber arm.
She was good. So, she and I sat down and had lunch. I ordered us some fried rice and milk for her, tea for me. She poured the milk into an empty coke bottle for her sister and ate with fury when the rice was brought.
We talked and she told me how her parents leave for work in the plains for months at a time. After our little meal, I gave her directions to where I had seen the Red Cross shelter the day before. I said goodbye to my friend Siveata; she said that I was nicer than most Americans.
Walking back toward the hotel I needed to hit the cyber cafe. I “No thanks’ed” all the sidewalk salesmen. One guy even tried to sell me this huge, five-foot long, squash shaped balloon.
“Excuse me sir, you would like balloon? I give you deal on big balloon,” he said.
When and for what in the hell would I need a balloon that size for? I have no idea. So I walked with a faster pace through the vendor gauntlet, so I could get here to type this. Which now, that I have finished, cost more than Siveata’s dinner.
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