Posted by Susan47 on November 18, 2005, at 10:50:26
In reply to Re: a woman's value and other stuff, a rant » Susan47, posted by Jen Star on November 18, 2005, at 0:03:18
Thanks for your messages and replies. Fact is I'm just keeping my head above major depression, and it's not biological it's environmental.. if that makes any sense ... but today I watched fifteen people pave the driveway at the apartments here, and three of them at least, were women in saris (sarees). They do it mostly by hand, almost everything is done by hand here in India, it seems. I took a movie with my camera, it has to be seen to be believed, from our perspective. There are several different teams. One person stands on the gravel pile and fills the buckets, which are shallow bowls, which are then carried on heads over to another person, who takes the bowl from the head of the walker, places it on his own head, and artfully and precisely, with a swirl, throws the gravel onto the work surface. Another person, wearing boots and carrying a bucket of hot tar, dribbles the tar over the initial road surface (which has also been painstakingly prepared and levelled by hand labour over the last week) and stays slightly ahead of the person throwing the small gravel ... and there are three men labouring over a fire preparing the hot tar. One man drives a roller of some sort; this is the only machinery used in the process. It's the last step. These people laboured for ten hours in the heat and the sun, working until well after sundown with only two short breaks that I witnessed. At one point I brought down fresh apples and some fudge-like sweets for them, which was handed around with big smiles. Oh yes, and most of the day two men on motorbikes stood watching, supervising ... I'm sure these labourers are illiterate and were working for probably a dollar or maybe even less, for the entire day ... and there's nothing anyone like me can do to make their lives any different. The foreman wasn't all too thrilled but I tried to placate him by telling him how obviously hard these people were working ... he seemed okay with it.. you have to understand these people are stick-thin, I mean, working in horribly dirty, hot conditions.. at lunchtime (I never actually saw any food being consumed nor anyone actually taking care of any need other than washing off dust and gulping a few handfuls of tap water at their break times) ... and the tenants of the apartment come home at the end of their workday and casually walk past these labourers as though they don't even exist ... not even looking at them .. and the sad thing is, I can sort of understand it all, because if you look anyone in the eye they become human to you, and you can't take that responsibility ... what a horrible world it is for so many people. I don't think the words "Why me" will ever cross my lips again ... I have no right to say those words.. a few days ago I saw women sleeping on the sidewalk in mid-day.. walking past a building I looked through a barred window and saw a small child on a cot being cared for by his grandmother .. in a dingy dark little room with nothing but rags for bedding ... what can I do? What can anybody do? You can't give money or goods directly to these people or you are mobbed, it's not safe to even do that .. you have to be surreptitious .. I have all this wonderful soap .. I left a bar out by the outside tap hoping if the labourers show up again tomorrow that they'll discover it, maybe they'll use it and feel a bit better ... there are no wild animals left in this part of India either, they've all been hunted into extinction ... you have to see this to believe it. It's a raped world ... and everyone suffers, even those who don't believe they do, the ones with deliberately closed eyes.
Today I spent some time at the local police station ... there are no filing cabinets, just rags wrapped around bundles of papers and thrown into piles on the floor, stuck behind old tarps which are filthy and weathered .. everything is covered with layers of red dust, the people constantly hack it out, but there are many good people here too. The good people to be around are those who're happy in spite of their poor living conditions. I'm glad I get to leave, if and when that actually happens (I know, fatalism has the better of me right now ...) ... I wouldn't want to be privileged in a country where so many work so hard for so little. It would change me into someone I wouldn't want to become. I'm already bad enough; already, I take too much for granted.
poster:Susan47
thread:579623
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20051109/msgs/580020.html