The widening of perspective
As I write this, I’m sitting on a bus that’s rumbling across Uttar Pradesh, a federal state in northern India. My seat, the tiny fold-out table on which I’m resting my notebook, the floor, the window, the plastic curtains, … everything is covered in grime. Wherever I turn, it all looks filthy, worn, spent. And that’s pretty much how I feel right now—and presumably how my fellow passengers must feel as well. The forty or so young, dark-haired men on this trip weren’t exactly brimming with joy to begin with, and the fact that we’re already more than two hours late doesn’t help to lift anyone’s spirits. It goes without saying that I’m the only white person on board, and that I haven’t heard a word of English spoken since I checked out of my third-rate B&B this morning—except for the countless unsolicited invitations to hop in some stranger’s tuktuk, get my shoes shined or my hair cut.
Outside it is getting dark. But there’s not much that’s romantic about the sunset. Quite the contrary, the rising dusk instead amplifies countless small irritations that have been bothering me for days: Flashing lights in the distance hurt my eyes; inscrutable faces suddenly seem menacing; the unnerving soundscape of cars, tuktuks, and motorcycles—all honking their horns all the time—sounds louder than ever. As I stare at the brown, hairy spider crawling up the pant leg of the man sleeping in the seat next to mine, I can’t help but wonder: Why the hell am I doing this?
I’m neither on a spiritual journey nor on a pleasure cruise, and least of all am I on a mission to “help” the people here. Even if I were, the futility of such an undertaking would be as enormous as the scale of the problems that plague this country: The poorest ten percent of India’s population, for example, live in extreme poverty. And the next 85 percent are still struggling with very low incomes. Only about 5% of Indians belong to what can be called the “middle” or “upper” class. And while this may sound like an dull statistic, let the enormity of these numbers sink in: More than 130 million people in this country live on less than $2 a day. Now, one could argue that $2 is not a small amount of money in India—it buys a decent hot meal, for example—but note that this $2 has already been adjusted for purchasing power. It’s the equivalent of 2 US dollars in the US that we’re talking about. So take the entire population of Germany and add the entire population of France. And then consider that these many people in India live on… basically nothing.
And yet, they live.
In my head I keep asking questions and making up stories about the guys around me on the bus. Where are they going? What jobs do they have? What is a day in their lives like? Are they happy? Am I?
I can’t help but compare what I’ve experienced here so far with what Gautama Buddha must have felt when he traveled through these lands some 2,700 years ago. The sufferings that he saw and that had such a profound effect on him—old age, sickness, death—are just as manifest here today as they were in the Axial Age. And the contrast between this visible daily struggle for dear life and my own pampered existence at home must be just as stark as it was for the young Shakya prince. My life, just like his, is one of comfort, abundance, and affluence. And just as the young Buddha was shielded from the harsh realities of human suffering, frailty, and disease in his father’s castle, we in the West also veil these troubling aspects of reality as best we can. They exist only in isolated places such as nursing homes, hospices, and morgues. Only when we’re personally affected are we forced to peek behind the curtains of these institutions—and turn away in disgust as soon as we can. Here in India, however, there’s nowhere to turn.
In the middle of Delhi, for example, there was this little girl, maybe a year and a half old, sleeping on the sidewalk, flies crawling all over her body. As was the elderly man without pants, living on a traffic island, accompanied three-legged dog. The stooped woman of indeterminable age begging for food on the steps of the Jama Masjid; a man, maybe as old as I am, acting out his obvious mental problems in the middle a four-lane road by shouting at the top of his lungs—presumably at nothing at all and everything at once. In India, you witness episodes like this all the time. Everywhere you look, it seems, there’s misery, suffering, pain, and sorrow.
Meanwhile, the spider has vanished from my neighbor’s leg. I have no idea where it went and probably don’t want to know.
We come to a stop at a small roadside tea stall. I get out to stretch my legs and take a few steps. A cup of tea costs 10 rupees, I notice, and as I casually watch the chai wallah in his checkered shirt prepare one cup after another, I can’t help but mentally sketch out his business model. He has to get the tea, of course, and the milk, the spices, and the propane for his stove. He’s probably right here in this very spot, inhaling exhaust fumes and dust, six hours a day, seven days a week. Suppose he’s really industrious and sells an average of ten cups an hour. He would make a top line of less than Rs 20,000 per month, and a profit of—let’s be generous—Rs 15,000. That works out to about $170, not considering additional expenses like rent, taxes or insurance. What kind of lifestyle can such an income support? Does he have four solid walls and a roof over his head? Can he eat three meals a day? Does he have access to running water? Sanitary facilities? Can he afford to send his children to school? When he goes to bed at night, does he feel a sense of accomplishment?
I don’t think poverty makes for a good spectator sport. I certainly didn’t travel thousands of miles to gape at poor people. And yet, I believe that this unfiltered, direct exposure to suffering touches me in a way that simply reading the statistics or watching a documentary could never do. After all, as human beings, we’re hardwired to care about individuals, not numbers. People we see, not abstractions. The one chai wallah, not the faceless 900 million others in his income bracket.
As we approach our destination, the people on the bus begin to wake up. There’s a traffic jam ahead (as there always is in India), our delay has increased to well over three hours, and some of the guys are getting visibly restless, nestling their bags, muttering to themselves, or frantically tapping away at their cell phones. The spider, in case you’re wondering, is nowhere in sight. Me, I’m exhausted, even though I haven’t done much today except sit, think, write. Once I get off, I’ll call an Uber from the bus stop to take me to my hotel. Walking would be a terrible exercise: It’s not that far, but stumbling through the dust, breathing the exhaust fumes, constantly dodging cars, tuktuks and motorbikes, always on the lookout for danger, is simply an ordeal I can’t take this evening. Interestingly though, I’ve had the impulse—for a second—to walk despite all these nuisances; to freely forfeit a bit of comfort that I could easily afford. To willingly suffer a little, just for the sake of suffering. This desire would likewise not be unfamiliar to the Buddha, who, after experiencing the harshness of the world outside his gilded cage, chose to live the life of an ascetic for a period of time. But then he understood that self-flagellation is not helping anyone. If I punish myself, it won’t make the lives of the people here any better. It would only increase the total amount of suffering in the world—and deprive a poor Uber driver of a handful of rupees. That can’t be right.
So what is there to gain from this journey, with all its ups and downs in terms of comfort, pleasure, and suffering? At the very least, I think it’s a sense of perspective. A glimpse of what life is like for billions of people in the developing world. And a renewed appreciation of the enormous privilege I have been given—not because of any merit of my own, mind you, but because of the sheer luck of being born in the right place at the right time.