let me first say this, if you are able to read this, in the comfort of your own technology: PC/MAC, phone, ipad, reader, in the comfort of your own room, office, etc --you have it good.
thank your lucky stars.
tonight, i saw a programme on tv (as part of a tv documentary series) about India on BBC,that Adrian and i are following, that made me thank my life, my comfort and my safety.
i have visited and been to India, and i come from the Philippines where some of these documentaries i see are made to document socio-economic differences, i am sometimes horrified to know that it actually happens, but i am still astounded when i discover a different kind of poverty i never knew existed.
i used to think, i lived a realistic down-to-earth living back home. i witnessed poverty, i witnessed and experienced hardships, but after seeing such documentary, i feel i lived a sheltered life,after all.
this documentary about India, talks about the life of certain pockets in the society that not the touring population know, and probably not the rest of their own people know.
the first series looked at the lives of a man who shared a rental room with 15 other men, they sweep gold-dust from the street and sell it to gold-hawkers. and another man,who squatted in the beach to open up an illegal pub. the second series was about this woman who lived in a shanty in the city with her many children and husband, to recycle plastic bottles and sell it to wholesalers. the second series showed that apart from money struggles, they had to contend with the urban mafia who keeps collecting money from them or else the husband could get beaten up or shot.
the first series showed how this man in the gold district (quite a busy street where gold exchange and buying happens) this gold-dust sweeper, wakes up at 3am every morning, to beat other gold-dust sweepers and get the first sweep himself. in india,where women, and children have gold on them, sometimes lose a piece of a the jewelry they are wearing, or even perhaps the gold hawkers lose speck of a gold they have on them to the street.
but the man who buys gold from him was conning him and buying his gold for a very meager price than the original market value, so being an ingenuous person, he thought of a different tactic: he was not sweeping the street anymore, he was going to go inside a street canal, fill up 30 sacks of sewage mud/dirt (imagine the human,animal and domestic waste, ugh!) to sell to the wholesaler/big buyers of gold dust by the Ganges (where they sift the mud to extract the gold).
so the story follows him on his daily struggles , waking up at the crack of dawn,to go inside a dirty sewage, get covered in muck (toilet/city sewage on him--i say that, coming from me who work with human waste in a clinical setting is nothing--we have gloves, sanitiser and hygiene protocols where i work), and still have the energy to follow his dream.
it was only the second part of the series so far, but i find it such a mind opener what lengths (and depths in his case) people have to go through to get that next meal.
i have been to india, and seen people live there, ate with locals and celebrated a cultural event with them, but i have only seen the educated/upper class indians' way of life. the postcards and photos we see of people living the 'picture-perfect poverty'photo actually doesnt come with the story--the urban mafias threatening to kidnap their children when they cant pay, or the 'love marriage' that resulted in the poverty because the parents were not pleased about the coupling, yet resulted in happy well-dressed children that go to boarding schools despite living in squattered makeshift tents as houses. these stories not even my indian friends could tell me because they themself drive range rovers and put us up in expensive 5 star hotels and shower us expensive sarees as tokens.
while watching the documentary, and blurting out to Adrian that "oh shocks, i think the Philippines is better off than they are". Adrian said to me , "You are saying that from your experience, but you do not know anyone from the Philippines who come from that section of society, but there are people in your country who probably do, and maybe worst".
But of course, I do know of poverty, I claim. I see it on TV patrol, on the news, heck, i even reported about it when i read the news on AM radio (the Inayawan scavengers, and squatters, etc)--but Adrian is right. until i know of someone, or friends with anyone/someone who live that life, i may get the picture in my brain, the vision of how it would look like--but to truly to know it-- i will not know.
and i do not wish anyone i know or friends with or related with, to let me discover the depths of it too.
(an ice cream vendor in tamil nadu... he has it easy compared to those on the documentary)
**
in consequence, i am even more grateful, but i somehow feel a little guilty of why we have so much while some have barely anything.
i do not have the answers,but all i know is, i will appreciate MORE what i have. and i will do my best to be of help to the society so that the government can focus on the ones that truly need the help.
too deep, i know. on a wednesday night, at that. but it has to be said.
a reminder to those like me who whine about the traffic (while im inside a nice heated or A/C'd car, or bemoaning the lipstick i forego to buy because i spent it on an overpriced Zara pump ..)
years has passed, maturity helps with lessening the whining and the shallow overtures, but real live stories like theirs are such a boink in the head.
**
i will go to work whistling tomorrow, and not complain about my taxes, my never-ending auditing and research assignments, and i will even love early mornings and the cold weather to get there because going to work in a nice comfy hospital (with free coffee,and biscuits), is far far better than going inside a ditch to scrape gold out of sewage.
**
PS. i might still complain about the weather,though. (hahaha).
i wonder if i can record the documentary for you guys to see (its interesting and informative to say the least). i'll see what i can do.
watch this space.
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