Laboring

Ahmedabad, or Amdavad as it's locally called, is not a tourist city. It's a gritty, loud, surreal city with more people and animals coexisting than I've ever imagined was possible. Dogs, cows, donkeys, horses, elephants, hawks, parrots, crows, and pidgeons fighting for space on the roads and rooftops. The streets are incredible. Yellow and green 3-wheeled motorized rickshaws seat two people comfortably but often 8-10 children, sometimes hanging out the back, feet almost brushing the pavement. On the road to Akshardam (one of the wonders) we saw babies, no mother in sight playing by the road, not more than 3 years old. Babies come to the rickshaw, saluting us, tapping our legs, smiling sweeting, speaking Gujarati or Hindi, I can't tell, wanting money. But even a bit of money won't help, or even satisfy. They always want more. It won't do a bit of good except let them eat for one more day. The caste system is clear and apparent everywhere from the servants, to the little children working, to the laborers, incredible numbers of them, to the street dwellers. Strangely India seems to work. It's hard to distinguish what's good and bad here. At first glance things look ugly, then beautiful, then filthy and inhumane. Even at Akshardam, so clean, sparkling, supposedly holy and blind to caste, welcoming all, still, workers were toiling in the hot sun, women in saris caring buckets of dirt on their heads, in a sort of chain-dance, intense manual labor with next to nothing in wages. Still, it works in some obscene way. Everyone has a job to do. There's no choice though. You are born a life. You are born either with or without shoes.