my heart continues to break in India. I knew it would happen before I left, but sometimes the level of violence and pain and carelessness towards other living beings is appalling to me.
I met a girl who was working for an orphanage in North India and she told me the story of a little girl. A little girl she took care of, a little girl without eyes.
The girl's parents had died when she was placed in the orphanage and because both of her parents died, her village thought she was a witch. So they tied her down and gauged her eyes out with sticks of bamboo.
And it makes me cry to think of what that little girl has been through.
I can never even imagine the life she has led.
Yesterday I was ashamed of myself.
I was sitting in the AirIndia office, speaking with the manager, when a man reached over me to hand the manager some paperwork and on his knuckles and elbow were lines of raw, open, oozing sores. White and red around the edges, swollen in anger, this elbow was 6 inches from my face and I gasped and covered my mouth - everyone in the office that had crowded around to see the American female turns to look at me.
This was a man with an open infection, and his sores were just exposed to everything - it looked like his skin was being eaten off of him, like a hole was being made in the back of his elbow, and all across his knuckles, a line of craters.
I had physically recoiled from this man, gasping as I did it. It was disgusting.
But what bothered me the most was that it had disgusted me so much, and that I had acted so rudely to this man, in public. I have no clue what it was, how long he had it, but he probably wasn't that happy with it in the first place. When a girl who was already a freak show brought attention to his sores - it isn't a surprise when he finished quickly and walked out.
But it surprised me to turn and see this huge gaping hole in the side of this man's arm.
My first thought was that he had done a few too many drugs, used a few too many dirty needles. But it was all over his hands and on the back of his elbow.
Whatever it was, I hope it gets better for him, and I hope for humanity that others take such sights with more dignity and respect.
Later on the way back, I saw a man walking a dog with a broken leg, dragging him along with a lease, while his broken front right leg just dragged across the sidewalk, sores on his knee and I just wanted to stop the car, and scoop the dog up, give him a hug, give him love, give him care. I don't know the status of his owner, but I know that if he felt anything for that animal, he wouldn't have made the dog walk.
And that cruelty makes my fists clinch, my eyes water and my whole body gets all worked up just to collapse under the weight of just having to drive by and not having done a thing.
There are so many things I can't help here. I don't know what I would do for anybody, or how I would even imagine trying to do it, but I wish and I hope for everyone and all that suffering ends.
Tonight as I lie on my back, blogging in my air conditioned dorm room the night before I hop a plane to the Himalayas, there are millions of people suffering in the world.
