India – 1

MYSITMW: – BRUSSELS – INDIA-1 – NUREMBERG – PARIS – SATURDAY NIGHT – A MANs LIFE – NO POINT TO IT

Friends, I’m looking forward to coming home, now a little closer. I had an exhausting day yesterday, all I could do to keep my eyes open on the 60min. cab ride back to the hotel, so that I could keep the mosquitoes away from me.

Bombay is a city of sharp contrasts by western standards; the “good” so deep one can only imagine it, the “bad” so prevalent one can’t ignore it.  What is this phenomenon? How can a country “condemn” its children to oblivion?

I have never seen base human need and poverty like this before. This is poverty of the human spirit, core, raw, naked, ugly and in “my” space. It touches me and leaves a “stain” while Pavarotti plays in the CD’s of the “enlightened”… I’m not resenting the “enlightened” just the hopelessness of the whole present setting.

The temperature is extremely hot & humid with a dark gray layer of exhaust fumes, clouds of mosquitoes and beggars. Little kids holding smaller lethargic babies all day long weave in and out of traffic begging for anything. One could loose an entire fortune giving out money and never make a dent on the human squalor.

All I can do is hold back tears and repress the desire to yell.

These conditions are incomprehensible to a Westerner. We see death and disease coming out of every open trash filled trench, stagnant water pond and cardboard shack, but through it all India persists. Roads and buildings get built, Mercedes-Benz’s crawl next to rickshaws, broken bicycles and elephant pulled carts, people marry and have more babies, the rich get richer, the poor accept… Go figure it.

Yesterday, I selected a new building for our HQ in Bombay, many souls will live there. It is a really good building, well designed and built standing like a mirage in the midst of blight. We will take the entire top floor, on a hill with terraces and views of Bombay on all sides. Great opportunity to establish a beacon of hope, a marker for the human spirit and to brighten up the place.

I thank God for my friends everywhere, our cushy and unappreciated standard of living. Maybe that’s why I must travel so much… to realize all of the blessings I am privileged to experience and enjoy.

You’re in my thoughts.