I never expected to be in India. And without a doubt, I never thought
once I had been I would return, again and again.
It wasn’t the exotic beauty that drew me back. It wasn’t the warmth of
the people, their gentle and inquisitive nature, their open hospitality. It
wasn’t the storied, ancient history of the country or its rich and varied
culture. It was not the colors or the spices or the sounds or the spirituality
of the place. India is all of these things, to be sure, and I have grown to
love them all. But they were not what seeped into my being and pulled me close,
becoming a part of me that I missed with a strange emptiness when I left.
It was the children.
They are everywhere. They fill the railway stations, the cities, the
shanty villages. Some scrounge through trash for newspapers, rags or anything
they can sell at traffic intersections. Others, often as young as two or three
years old, beg. Many are homeless, overflowing the orphanages and other
institutional homes to live on the streets. I had no way of knowing just how much
they would change my life.
From the moment I arrived, I found India to be everything I had imagined
– only more so. More colors and smells, more noises and people, more
everything. It was an assault on all the senses at once. There seemed no still
or quiet space. Instead there were throngs of people everywhere, living and
working and sleeping; hundreds of street vendors lined every available inch of
sidewalk, while mangy dogs and cows nosed at piles of trash around them.
Rickshaw drivers pedaled through traffic alongside schoolgirls with their
braided hair and backpacks. The smell of curry and incense hung thick in the
air along with soft chanting from nearby temples. The dusty roads peppered with
potholes were filled with a constant stream of buses, bicycles, rickshaws, cars
and cows and rising over it all was the constant, blaring beep-beep of the
horns. It was the most alive place I had ever been. India is too big to
describe adequately, too big perhaps to absorb in a single lifetime. The
country simply wrapped itself around me and refused to let go.
And in the children this beauty seemed to come alive, almost making me
believe it was a living entity I could capture in my hands. They are what bring
me back to India over and over – to volunteer at an orphanage run by the
Miracle Foundation, home to over a hundred kids. When I arrived for the first
time in 2005, I had expected it to be a sad place, an emotionally wrenching
experience. But those expectations had been turned on their head. Yes, there
are stories behind each of the children – many of them painful and tragic.
Stories of death, abandonment, abuse, poverty. They all have a past.
Yet their hope and resilience have amazed me time and time again; the
ability of their spirits to overcome crippling challenges inspire me. Even in
the most deprived circumstances they are still kids – they laugh and play,
perhaps far less frequently than others; they develop strong bonds and
relationships to create family where none exists; and most of all they have an
enormous amount of love to give - for nothing more than just showing up.
As I sat in the courtyard on my last night with them, and house mother Madhu held a tray
of tiny, steaming cups in front of me, I felt everything I loved about the
place converge together inside me in that moment.
The
smell of the chai, its cardamom and ginger and cinnamon drifting up to my nose,
the sound of bare feet slapping against the ground as children ran. The soft
breeze that whispered through the trees and caressed my skin while the fading
sun bathed everything in an orange and pink light. The colorful painted
elephants who seemed to watch over us from their places on the surrounding
walls. The vibrant blue and yellow and purple sarees of the house mothers as
they passed by and the bangles on their wrists that clinked melodically against
each other while they worked. The occasional monkey above us in the trees, or a
calf or dog that wandered into the courtyard before being shooed away by the
staff. Most of all, the familiar faces around me that made me feel I had come
home.
The
very existence of these children had forever altered both the person I was and
my view of the world. In some ways I felt more familiar to myself here, like I
was now the person I had been brought to India to become. I had arrived, that
first time two years before, not really knowing what to expect. I had not come
to India to change anything about it; instead, the country and its people had
worked a transformational change in me. They had allowed me into the real heart
of the place and by doing so spared me from viewing it with the eyes of an
outsider.
India simply cannot be
approached with anything but fully open arms and a willing heart. And it will
embrace you in return with an exhilarated spirit, splendor and enchantment,
nonstop vitality, amazing people and their daily parade of life – struggles,
joys and triumphs – that passes by every moment. I was lucky enough to have
been given this incredible treasure by these children and the people of India.
