March 18, 2004

"Bye Bye! Chocolate?"

How much does a clean conscience cost in India? I'm figuring on about ten to twenty rupees (or about 50 Australian cents) a day.

I've never really seen poverty before. But in India, you can't walk more than about 50 metres down the street without it jumping out of the pavement to ask you for something: a leper with no hands pushed around in cart; a pretty little barefoot girl holding her even littler sister, both with grimy hair, dirty faces and big weepy eyes; on old widow with no prospects, just a bright but filthy sari; a young mother lying on the street with her crying baby. "One rupees?" "One rupees?" bringing their hands (if they have any) up to their mouthes meaning "I'm hungry."



People see foreigners as walking dollar signs: someone vastly wealthy. Some people ask me how much my camera cost. "Ummm... yeah... quite a lot..." I can't bring myself to tell them it cost them more than they would earn in 5 years. The money I earnt on my Bollywood shoot was so little as to be meaningless to me, but it was still 10 times what the average Indian would make in the same time.

I usually give them something. But give money to one person: ten more appear and the first person demands more, without even pausing to thank you. It's endless, and you can't help everyone. Still wrestling with the moral implications of all this.

But it's not all quite as grim as that. Poverty doesn't always mean misery, and there are still plenty of smiles.

The cutest were the little kids in the little rural village of Mandu*. Somehow everyone in Mandu has got "hello" and "bye bye" mixed up. The kids run out of their little mud and straw houses posing for photos and saying "Bye Bye. Chocolate?"





* Mandu is littered with ruined forts and palaces. It was once the centre of an Afghan/Mogul empire, and the ancient home of a great king who devoted the better part of his life to women and song, building one palace just to house his harem of about 15,000 nubile nymphs. It's now all in ruins, but we're pretty sure that if you refilled the old stone pools, added some subtle lighting and spun a sly electric beat, it would be just about the coolest place on earth for a party.

Posted by Andrew Wallace @ 7:15 PM