Carry it with you

One day we were sitting on a cool mountaintop, gazing out on a lush panorama, and the next we saw a man dying on a baking floor. India is like that.
The bus from Kodaikanal to Tanjore took eight hours, and it seemed like another continent. Beautiful, leafy Kodai is an old colonial retreat tucked high in the hills of Tamil Nadu. Our three days there were spent walking in the woods, eating at excellent restaurants and taking pedalos out on the lake.
Tanjore was very different. We arrived late at night, and struggled through the crowded, pungent streets with our backpacks, looking for the Ashoka Lodge. The rooms were hot and airless.
In the morning we headed for the Royal Palace, and it was just inside the gates that we saw what looked like heap of rags under an arch.
'It's a body,' said one of the girls in a low voice.
But it moved, and at the same time I realised there were flies swarming all over it. The person – I think it was a man – merely rolled over a little and then was still.
We were six naïve European girls, and the sight of someone clearly emaciated and weak lying in the midst of such grandeur was deeply shocking. We had seen what looked like bodies in the streets of Chennai, but here was a man perhaps near death in the shadow of a palace.
We bought fruit and water from the vendor near the gate and one of the girls laid them near the man's head. But he didn't move.
There is no happy ending. We carried on into the palace, and admired the brightly painted walls, the marble columns, the intricate bell tower. We discussed, briefly, whether we could do anything more to help the man – call the police, an ambulance, the embassy?
'They wouldn't come,' said someone. 'They'd tell us this is the way things are here.'
So we didn't call. On the way back out we had to pass the man again, and this time one of the girls left two thousand rupees near his head. That afternoon we left Tanjore.
I've wondered since whether we could have done more. That we should is clear. Perhaps we could have used our money to save his life.
There is an argument that, as a Western tourist, you can't solve all the problems that you encounter on a visit to India, you can't lift everyone out of poverty, you can't save every life. But it doesn't follow that you shouldn't save even one.
Could we have saved his life? Possibly. Would it have been a 'good' thing to do? Definitely. Would we have felt like better people? Undoubtedly.
But we didn't.