2003-11-28

I spent my first months here living so simply... work/hostel/work/hostel. The last few weeks have been a bit of a blowout of the best that bombay has to offer: food, music, shopping. It just reinforces the contrasts between the things I see at work and the things I can do at night.

I don't know how to convey this city properly. There is art and history and culture. So much education and wealth. I've been to parties where everyone is wearing designer clothing, there are drugs in the bathrooms, and imported Mercedes' in the parking lot.

I have great meals and conversations about books and plays and travel.

But then you see a man weaving through cars waving a withered arm, limp and thin as spaghetti. Rows of metal shacks, women cooking over oil drums.

*

Beggar child sticks a hand into the rickshaw when we stop at a traffic light. It's hard not to recoil at the sudden contact, and I always feel guilty at my reaction. My friend sends the child away, and the boy instantly bends his head and starts weeping. Then he tries to jump into the rickshaw as we drive away.

His routine is too practiced, too polished to be credible, but that in itself is sobering. How is this child so skilled, at five?

7:22 p.m. - 2003-11-30