I can’t quite say where our adventure began. Maybe it was 60 days ago when we started putting this overwhelming experience together for ourselves. Perhaps it was at the check-in counter at Newark airport, where the attendant took us into a less populated area of the airport to show us her amazing headstand abilities. But I think years from now, when I look back, I’ll remember the beginning as the black and yellow cab ride from the airport in Mumbai.
The three of us rode in silence. Although it seems obvious, I felt as if I was in a new world. Everything was foreign to me. The people, the chaotic sounds, the smells, the dirty orange glow of the air. Everything. But the one thing that first hit me was how incomplete everything seemed to me. There are giant pillars, empty frames, supporting an overpass that’s nowhere to be found. Scaffolding that rises stories into the air, lonely on the sidewalk, bending into nothing. Ladies that beg for an American coin while our cab is stopped at a red light. Their faces older than any I’ve seen before, and brand new babies cradled in a sling. One of them rubbed on our windows, with the soft and desperate touch of a mother, who cannot feed her child. Dump trucks driving in lines one after the other after the other, all empty. And wild dogs, chasing motorcycles and wagging their tails.
I feel like I don’t belong here. Because I don’t. I’ve never felt more uncomfortable than I have the last several hours. And those feelings are incredible and exciting. Tomorrow we go to the slums, and everything will be magnified. I’m almost as nervous as I am excited, and I am so fortunate to have my sister and two great friends to share this experience with.
I can’t say where our adventure began. But I know this is the beginning. And I hope that by the end, the incompleteness of my surroundings fades, and I learn why dump trucks drive empty, and the scaffolding climbs to nowhere.
- Brennan
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