Refraction: a snapshot of the India diaspora in poverty in the shadow of Boudha

The faces of the Indian diaspora in the shadow of Boudhanath

I have a dear, dear friend in Kathmandu who is about as smart, sweet, and giving as they come. She is Punjabi and lives in a village with other Punjabis, Biharis, Rajasthanis and others in the Indian diaspora who have come to Kathmandu to get out from under crushing poverty and higher costs of living there.

Many come here and work at subsistence jobs, many beg, some find sustainable livings, and the village itself is on the grid, has local Indian run stores and in general is holding up well. Many lost all they had in the earthquake and it's a testimony to the villagers that they really do look after one another. Most are women. The men, sadly, are typically abusers - mostly of alcohol, but of their spouses more.

Out of respect for my friend, I am not referring to her by name, nor will I post her or her kids' pictures, but tonight I saw two more examples of why we're friends and why she is, very much, one of my heroes.

Before I continue, I'll preface this with a story. I was to come for supper this evening and earlier I was waiting for her sister to show up. I was standing in front of a convenience store across the street from the main gate to Boudhanath when a woman with a baby in her arms and a young girl approached me and asked me if I'd buy milk for her. This is common across South Asia and for the record, it's not cheap. Many of my Nepalese friends get on my case for doing this and at different times, I get tired of it, too, but I cannot dismiss the need. Still, I just - and this is a huge character flaw - I wish they'd just go away after I've bought the rice or the milk or whatever. Poverty is extremely real here. It's in your face, and you're frankly dead if you don't respond or feel as though there's something you should do.

Nepalese (and were this India, Indians) will say "oh, you shouldn't give to them; they're lazy, they just don't want to work, they're professional beggars, they have houses back in India - or if they're Nepalese, they have houses in the Valley". Well, it doesn't seem to occur to the more well-heeled Indian or Nepalese (or American when it comes to poverty in our country) that there's much more to the issue than that, including that very attitude. We who live quite well and can travel and rarely spend time among villagers who are ekeing out a living enough to see first hand what it feels like, look the other way or in any direction but at the person asking for help.

I should also add that while there are services available, there's very little outreach to get to populations at risk. In any case, this woman attempted to engage me in conversation and frankly, I didn't really want to talk. She was - really - so nice and grateful. And frankly, I was doing my best to deflect any conversation or details.

A man came up, well-attired, and I couldn't get a read on him. We chatted for a bit and another guy showed up on crutches looking pretty beat-up and half-blind. My ire was rising and I gave the guy on crutches a hundred rupees and told him to move on, and not in a particularly nice or genteel way. Frankly, I was a bit of a prick. The woman said, oh, don't be mad sir, you made him happy. That deflated me but then the well-attired guy asked if I was from the US. I said yes, and he said oh, you're rich!

Well, that was it. I looked at him and I looked at this woman and I said, no, I absolutlely am not rich. But the minute those words escaped my lips, I felt smaller and smaller. I have the luxury of a well-appointed guest house where my "rent" is all of ten to twelve dollars a night. I can eat every day at a pretty decent restaurant. Hell, I can book a flight anywhere I want. And at the end of it, I'll have the equivalent of a few years salary for many of these people, "professional beggars" or not. I looked at the woman with her kids and over her shoulder saw my friend's sister who came to meet me. The first thing that hit me is what a fucking hypocrite I am. The second thing was that my friend's sister (who is a stitch and I mean super-funny) is also a so-called "professional beggar" in the eyes of many. Why am I happy to hang out with her and take her out for a shop but I couldn't wait to extricate from a simple conversation with a woman who's doing the same thing?

I excused myself and as N. (my friend's sister) and I strolled back to the village, I asked her about her day and she's in a pickle. No tourists, lousy day for begging, her feet hurt (she's got an issue with her ankle and I've been telling her to go to the clinic and get a diagnosis, but then she loses time working), and her son is coming home, so she needs to buy food, and then she said, don't tell (my friend) her sister but could we meet and could I go food shopping with her? And this was after she told me to not give that woman money that I'd just bought milk for. I told N. I'd be happy to go food shopping with her tomorrow and I didn't read her the riot act because in my crummy mind, I'd thought as low of the woman as she had). However, what spurred this on was that my friend had to tell her sister that yes, we had a great morning going out and shopping for some really cool utensils. We cook together and I kind of alluded to a few things she could use and we discussed all this. Plus my friend's been seriously ill and hasn't been able to work. For the record, she doesn't beg; of her sisters, she's the only one that actually earns a living selling mala bags, katas, bangles, and such to tourists on the street. She buys wholesale and undercuts the Boudha competition by dealing direct. No store, no overhead.

She's also the only one of the sisters who speaks English well; so she's much more comfortable and competent in approaching tourists. I told N. I'd go shopping with her, and I wouldn't say anything about it, but on the way back to my friend's place I reflected on how bloody difficult it is for Indians in poverty in Kathmandu. They're able to travel easily across the border but the poor are considered lower than the Nepalese poor. The opportunities for employment are limited by several issues, not the least of which is that many are illiterate, many speak rudimentary Nepali (better than I do, pal), and many aren't skilled. Because of this, many are not aware of or have access to the social services available.

N. and I got back to the village to my friend's apartment, a room really, with a large platform bed and a gas hot-plate with two burners. It's where we hang and I play with her kids and eat waaaay too much. It's a treat. It really is. Her boys are beautiful and great, great fun kids.

When I got to the village, she was outside chatting with her sister K. and a neighborhood girl and N. sat down next to me and without missing a beat, K. asked if I'd buy her phone. I looked at my friend and said, "your sisters: this one wants a camera, this one wants a phone, what the hell?" and we sort of laughed. She knows I love her sisters, but she also knows that I know the lives they lead. I turned to K. and said, "we'll see." The neighborhood girl looked at me, smiled and said in perfect English, "don't look at me! I don't want anything!" We laughed and my friend and I went to her place where she'd already cooked a meal (and a big one, at that) and we commenced to dining. The kids were hungry, she was hungry, and I was not, but I did indeed stuff my face.

After dinner, we chatted a bit and an older gentleman showed up in the doorway and he and my friend exchanged words. She knelt down under the platform bed and pulled out a bin full of eye-glasses that the older gentleman rummaged through. His wife came, he found a pair he liked, and they moved on and my friend replaced the bin under the bed. I looked on quizzically and she said simply that in the course of a day, people come to her and give her random objects among which are eyeglasses. Some people ask her why she doesn't sell the specs and she says because the old people in her village can't afford them and they often need glasses. So she keeps a substantial inventory on hand for them. I was almost gobsmacked. She doesn't think twice about this. There's no hemming or hawing or internal argument about "why bother", this is one reason why she is utterly lumninous.

I just looked at her and said, "you are so cool." She completely dismisses me the times I say something nice about her. Months ago, a kid came in with a plate and she dolloped out a ton of food and the kid goes off. The kid's mom came in. Same thing. No big deal. I just remarked that I found that lovely. She looked at me like I was Stuttering Bob or the proverbial red-headed step-child, wrinkled her brow, shrugged her shoulders and said, "of course."

Later, I was watching "Motu and Patlu" with the kids and about a dozen women and children came in with receipts. I knew one of the women and her children but this was serious village business. They presented their receipts to my friend and some had medicines and odd-shaped jars of something in their bags. There was a lot of back and forth that went over my head, but the gist of it was that earlier in the evening a "big man" (i.e., important) showed up and said that he had medicine for the families and apparently would give a discount. But as my friend pointed out these folks, some of this "medicine" was just dietary supplements and they were paying way too much for useless items, that what they needed were medicines to combat the fever and cold symptoms.

She told them to go back to the man, return these supplements and get their money back; that these dietary supplements were useless. She said, very lovingly, that "a lot of people in my village don't understand"; so they come to her and learn about a variety of different issues. I wouldn't go so far as to call her a matriarch (she's too young), but she's close to it.

I would say that she cares more deeply for her village than they know. Her heart is huge. We chatted a little bit about her place in all this and she said that she knows there's gossip. She knows her husband's family bad-mouths her (he's no longer on the scene after a recent drunken beating  - one in a series - and theft and has gone back to India but the in-laws remain), she knows that we dust up conversation but she also knows that we have a really tight bond and that - go figure - I genuinely love this family! I've asked if she'd be interested in moving out, getting an apartment and doing something more ambitious and I get that look again.

I'll be frank. It's humbling to be in the presence of someone who has, well, not nothing (or anything quite that dramatic), but who is a single mother living in poverty (though she doesn't see it as a limitation) who routinely serves others. Particularly after a fat slob of Americana gets his back up about people in similar or worse circumstances asking for help.

She's told me many, many times: "if someone comes to you begging and they ask for food, you tell them to come see me; they know me, they know I will feed them." Seriously, I'm in the presence of one of the most genuinely good people I've ever met.

Do I want more for her? Sure. There are a couple of organizations I know that would fit the bill for improving her quality of life, but each time I've suggested setting up an appointment, she doesn't rebuff me, but she looks at me and kind of lets me know that she'll do what she's going to do in her good time.

Honestly, I don't think she needs my help. The kids are going to school and for her, that's paramount, and when she's working, she does well enough to save and get through lean times. She knows how to manage her business and time and has more people skills than most entrepreneurs I've met. A lot of that is because she's genuine.

She's not the only person in her village with this kind of enormous virtue. I've met a number of her neighbors around Boudha who I find out later live in the village; some are cobblers, some are construction workers, one is a thangka painter. I believe their stories are worth telling and while I don't want to exploit people for the sake of a blog post, I think it's important to draw some attention to this situation.

This larger issue of the Indian poor is not going to be met by the attitude (the same one that I showed evidence of with my impatience) that the poor are lazy, despicable, or not worthy of love or support. It's my hope that upon my return, I can find a more adequate means of overcoming that attitude in myself, working with others to heal it, and take some concrete measure to aid those in diaspora to perhaps grow out of these conditions.

To my Nepalese friends, this is not to exclude or diminish the issues surrounding the crushing poverty that native Nepalese citizens face. As many of you know, I do a little work to assist with the issues facing the rural areas of Nepal and perhaps there's a way to meaningfully merge the two - the Nepalese (Tamang, Newari, etc.) at risk with the Indian diaspora population in poverty - in a broader strategic approach.

This is not storage. It's an older woman's home.