Take a "City Walk" tour of the Delhi railway station and backstreets bustling with daily activity. Get a look at Indian city life as few outsiders do, led by your English-speaking guide, a former street child who lived in the train station. Visit Salaam Balaak trust, a non-profit organization working to save runaway and abandoned children from the hardships of life on the street.
How do we present ourselves to the world? As I try to digest the sights and sounds of this first full day, over and over, this question reverberates within ~ how do we play the edge between appearing, and disappearing?
We are met outside of the train station by our guide, Iqbal. At the age of five, his father simply walked away from him in his village market, never to return, and the "aunt" and "uncle" who claimed him put him to work, then physically abused him when his work was not enough. What compels a five year-old to believe his life would be better were he to board a train, bound for anywhere, rather than to stay put? There is nothing in my life, as a mother or a daughter, that could have prepared me for this.
Invisibility was Iqbal's armor, his protection from government authority, from other children and pimps, all preying off of the other for the sake of their own survival. But, as a child who was saved, he now skillfully walks us down narrow streets, then up three flights of stairs until we are at doors of one of Salaam Balaak's five shelters. It is in these rooms that a different picture emerges. I am confronted with boys all vying, through their actions or their voices, to be photographed, to be physically in the picture. We shake hands, we exchange names. Whether purely a performance for attention in the moment, whether my presence conditions and contributes to their frenetic actions, I bear witness to children that demand to be seen.
Fifteen minutes later, it is all over. In silence, we descend the staircase, squeezing disinfectant into our hands, wiping away the human touch, or possibly sanitizing the experience itself?
As a visitor to India, I try not to draw unnecessary attention to myself. Respectfully, I pin back my hair; I dress in traditional clothing, modestly covered from my shoulders to my ankles. And yet, as a tall, Caucasian, blond woman, how can I be anything other than other? Within this paradox, I take comfort that if I can only be seen as exactly who I am, then let me embrace the possibility of being my whole self. Let my voice be not a performance, let the identity that I construct be one that is authentic and meaningful. Welcome to India.
* I fully recognize that my reflections, and the luxury to have the time for such contemplations, are a gift of my life circumstances. It is my hope that this recognition will not act as a shield, but rather allow me to see with greater clarity.