What it means to be in someone else's land

On my walk this morning, I thought about the garbage issue. Food scraps go to the street animals; glass bottles are used over and over, then broken for topping walls to keep out invaders; paper is burned at night for heat; metal is always recycled over and over. Plastic. Now, plastic is the only thing that has one use, one life, never to be reincarnated, but to only stay on the street, collecting into piles, not to biodegrade for a thousand years, and only then into a chemical dust. It feels even more important here to carry my fabric shopping bag because we all have to live with my plastic bag, your plastic cup clogging the open channel dug in the road where our own sewer water travels. We all have to sweep the plastic off our front steps into the pile at the end of our block that will only grow bigger and bigger in time. There's no garbage collection here. There's no landfill, but I know a village is approaching on the train when I see a depression in the land, filling up and trailing off with plastic. What a wonderful invention, plastic! Not everyone uses plastic though. When I buy fresh sugarcane or orange juice from the street vendor, I use a glass cup that he washes (or at least rinses) out when I'm done. Often there are chai stalls that use clay cups. When you're finished, you can either fill up again or smash your cup to the ground, turn it back into dust from where it came. I suppose the chai maker is also a potter at night. I give my utmost respect to the hundreds of millions of Indian people who truly live off the land, naturally preserving their resources, having the foresight to see the dangers of what we in the west see as essential to life itself. I don't see the shoe maker with his decades old brass tools and the laundry woman with her flat stone and solid-iron iron feeling miserable for themselves. That's not to say that everyone's job is of equal fairness. There are millions of laborers, slaves to rich landowners who are forced to work 16 hours a day and still live in extreme poverty. Poverty, like hundreds of families who have no choice but to live practically on top of one another, in torn, tattered tents on polluted, unauthorized land. These people are the most resourceful because everything is precious and can be turned into something usable.

Now, regarding the farms and the tribal peoples who have lost their ancestral land, as I understand it, there was no monsoon for three years and much of the farmland in the Rajasthani desert was dried up, unfertile for this time. Last year the monsoon came back, but in its absence, the government and wealthy corporations persuaded and even forced farmers to sell or give up their land, often for a very small sum of money because farmers were destitute, hardly producing enough food for their families. All over Rajasthan for miles and miles outside any city, there are walls dividing plots of land, walls built 3 to 10 feet tall, some topped with broken glass bottles to deter people from jumping the wall. Walls, walls, fortifying, containing, keeping humans out. Some walls have signs, "this plot of land is the property of such and such industries". But all of these plots are barren. What was once fertile farmland of the ancient peoples rich with history, dignity and customs, is now in the hands of a corrupt government and corporate giants, ready to build the next "mall destination", "master-planned community for extraordinary lifestyles" (cut to a golfer swinging a club on an artificial green hilly course), and Florida style condo "self-contained neighborhoods". I'm happy to give shameful credit for these quotes to EMAAR MGF, whose commercials play constantly on most Indian TV channels, convincing the younger generation that this is what they want.

This burgeoning upper middle class that is the product of the US, Europe and Australia's tech-outsourcing is creating a new culture that cuts off its family's sensible traditions of saving for retirement, house upkeep and kitchen wares, and instead disposes its disposable income on disposables and entertainment pleasures. Are we reducing India to our simple, happy ways? India is a capitalist democracy and has been since before we existed! So what exactly is happening here?? Can we not just simply come here to learn their ways? There is so much to learn here about the traditional ways, but it's a slow, quiet process of learning, teaching, doing, making, understanding, respecting and preserving.

There is so much energy here. It seems that people talk faster, are more enthusiastic, always wanting to be a part of your existence. If you ask an honest person where to go for dinner, they will tell you their personal favorite place, what to order and how much to spend. Often an Indian will describe how beautiful each sari in their shop is, all the intricacies of its stitching, patterning, and who made it, the history of their village, and on and on.

People here are so proud of their history, their lives, families. When you meet someone the common conversation goes like this: What is your country? What is your good name? What is your business? What are your brothers' businesses? Are you sisters married? What is your father's business? What do you think of India? What are your political views on India, on your own country? That's it. That's what they want to know and hope you will ask them back the same questions. That is how you know someone here.

It's a fine line we tread as tourists. On one side, we help the economy, and occasionally help sustain small communities when unobtrusive tourist programs are in place and we can seek them out, buying directly without middleman. On the other side, we Westerners are huge waste producers, electricity and water consumers, and by staying in mega-hotels, constantly asking them to provide us with western style comforts, then we're asking India to change its ways. I'm guilty as any other traveler here in that I need my peaceful hotel at the end of the day to stay sane. I stayed just one night in a roach-infested hotel with a bathroom that only vented into another bathroom that only vented into the hallway. I promptly packed up and left the next morning happy to pay quadruple at the next place which boasted 24 hour hot water and room service. Still at less than 30 USD a night, I'll splurge on this level of comfort.

So what can we do now, to actually help this country? I believe it starts grassroots. There is little faith in the government here. Any Indian will tell you flat- it's corrupt. Period. But the people here are so smart and resourceful. I went to a weavers cooperative, a beautiful series of round, mud homes where they spend a month to 3 months constructing, weaving, creating one exquisite rug from mere threads on a bamboo loom. They sell rugs direct to heritage hotels in Jodhpur and make a decent living to sustain the cooperative. Three small solar panels on high poles powered the lights at night for the village. I was quite happy to pay full price for a rug there, knowing that it would sell for the same price in the US, but this little community would only see a fraction of that, middlemen and fuel charges bringing the net profit down for the weavers.

Sometimes I see solar hot water collector plates on the roof tops and I'm inspired.

I would propose to anyone who wishes to travel to India or anywhere else in this glorious world, to do your research and really think about your impact, then seek out ways to contribute positively, directly, to the people who need your business the most. It is so important to do this, if we all want to be world-travelers, intelligent beings and citizens of this earth.