Quindecim

Issue date: 10/5/07 Section: International

Media Credit: Emily Dobkin A family of four rides through Chennai, India.

Media Credit: Raina Moyer Emily Dobkin visits the Taj Mahal during her stay in India while participating in the Semester at Sea study abroad program.

Media Credit: Emily Dobkin Dobkin met children playing in Chennai, India.

A year ago, I had never even dreamed of visiting India. Whenever the country came to mind, my first image would always be of my best friend from my childhood; she and her family were from India. Playing at her house was not like playing at any other friends' house.

Her family did not speak English, and I did not understand what her grandmother was mumbling in Hindi while the pungent smell of curry permeated the house. The framed picture of the Taj Mahal rested on their mantle and my friend's henna-stained hands always enchanted me.

But it was nothing compared to actually visiting India.

Last spring, I traveled around the world with Semester at Sea. Living for most of the time on a ship with other college students, I traveled to and spent time in 11 different countries. It has been very difficult for me to choose a favorite place because each one was so drastically different, but four months after returning, I have settled on India.

I'll never forget being scrunched into that tiny telephone booth in Chennai, my ear sticking to the phone as I dripped sweat, bugs flying through the thick air as I attempted to tell my family everything I could in our brief ten minute phone conversation. My Dad wrote me an email soon after. "Em, so wonderful to finally hear your voice again; you sounded enchanted."

Chennai is a bustling city, but not in the way I am used to. I have been conditioned to think of gigantic skyscrapers, towering buildings, and bright lights, all standing tall in the sky; all artificial and metallic. But in India, I did not have to look up. I think that this is fitting to the Indian culture - they do not need to have any more offered than what is front of them; they can take things as they are and don't dwell on what could be better, a view of life I found wonderfully refreshing.

I've spoken to a few Americans who have been to India, and most were unable to filter out their initial impressions. Many of my own peers I traveled with complained about the poverty, the overpopulation, and the disgusting odor.

Flashes of such surreal images will never escape me mind. I saw Bindis, the red dots that signify marriage, sweating from brown foreheads. I smelled the scent of cow dung almost everywhere I went. I watched in awe as an entire family of five drove by me on one motorcycle. I felt the children tugging on my pants. I heard the incessant honking of horns. I saw a young girl whose magenta sari hung off her shoulder as her naked baby sister weighed her down. I saw young boys motioning to their hungry stomachs. I saw a whiter-than-white beard accentuate the dark lines of an old man's face. And for each layer of culture that exists in India, I found many layers of different brightly colored saris.

I saw the layer of dirty filth that cast a film across all of India.

Forever ingrained in my memory are the way people looked at me. I did not feel violated by these stares as I did in many of the other countries I visited. Rather, I felt something much deeper. I felt their dark, profound eyes looking right into my soul.

I will never forget the eyes of the little boy who sat before me when I awoke on a train from Delhi to Agra. My eyes opened to see a boney little boy sitting down on the floor right next to me, just waiting for me to open my eyes. He motioned to his stomach, with his hand moving in a circular motion that complimented the wheels of the train racing on the track. I shook my head. He continued, taking his hand from his belly to his mouth, placing the invisible food into his mouth. I knew what he wanted, but I had nothing with me to give him. He stayed, and I looked away, not able to meet his stare. Saying I had nothing, but knowing I had everything, broke my heart.

Leaving Agra, I sat in the train station watching more children run and scream, beg and tug. It was very moving to see how these children are poor, yet they are still able to smile and play happily. My peers kept buying them soda and candy as I wrote postcards, but I kept glancing up and thinking - I wanted to give these children so much more than Sprite and Snickers. As I continued to write, I noticed a little boy peering over my shoulder. I wrote my name …"I am Emily" and asked him what his name was. I knew he probably could not write his name, let alone speak English, but I gave him my pen anyway. His eyes focused on the post card and he concentrated ever so carefully. He began to copy my name… backwards though, right to left. A worker at the train station yelled something to him and he fearfully ran away. We kept eye contact from across the train station, and I motioned him back over. I drew a sun, some stars and a moon. He studied them, and meticulously copied every design. As I boarded the train his eyes followed me; we waved goodbye to one another through the window.

I never gave him candy or bought him a soda. I had been so pained the day before, with the boy on the train, but this particular young boy made me realize that these begging children are not all searching for material things. Yes, both these children were malnourished. And yes, they surely lived in overcrowded homes, if their families had homes at all. But just like every other child growing up anywhere in the world, they find happiness wherever they can.

It wasn't the actual sights in India that moved me, but the comparisons I was forced to make between my own life and this foreign one. It astounded me that filthy, dirty, overcrowded streets could exist side-by-side with the purity, cleanliness and peacefulness of the Taj Mahal. And yet, the same spectrum exists on a completely different level throughout American cities - and it's no more obvious than here in Baltimore.

Despite the relentless poverty, the honking horns, the cows and monkeys roaming the dirt-paved streets, India is still overflowing with peace, honesty, happiness, and love.

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