Why I keep coming back

I wrote about my motivations for keeping on coming back to India a few months ago for an application. For one reason or another, this essay didn't make it into the final application submission, but I wanted to share part of it, in case any of my experiences touch you as they have touched me, and make you want to come here and do something.

I waited outside a doctor’s office with a baby dehydrated from constant diarrhea and vomiting. Her parents drink every day—her mother drank throughout her pregnancy. She threw up on me as we waited, but afterward, as I sang to her and made funny faces, she smiled up at me. Her smile is the reason I want go back. Rohan is an 8-year-old, deaf, blind, mute orphan who I obtained a disability certificate for from a government hospital. I sat with him for hours in line for days and shuffled him from department to department, all to obtain two signatures for his certificate. He felt the watch on my wrist and my monsoon-inspired afro and broke into giggles as he recognized me. His giggles are the reason I want go back. Ashvin is a 9th grade slumdweller* who I taught English to. He saves every rupee he earns to help his family. He carefully safeguarded a 1 Rupee coin that I accidentally left lying by him to give back to me the next day he saw me, telling me I should really take better care of my money. His sincerity is the reason I want go back. I walked by Shantamaaji, an 80 year old woman who lives alone beneath a tarp, every day on my way to the community center in the middle of her slum. She greeted me with a “namaste” and big, toothless smile every time I walked by. Her open heart is the reason I want go back.


Rohan.

*I was told by some advisors that the word "slumdweller" may be "offensive" to the committee reading my application. I was surprised and became more and more annoyed by this idea as I thought about it. Why should a committee of influential academics, policymakers, and generally well-off people be offended by this term? In fact, I think it's politically insensitive and incorrect to use euphemisms or broader terms that aren't so specific (not that slumdweller is that specific anyway, but I suppose it is more specific than "the impoverished," which was one of the terms suggested to me as a replacement for the word I was using) for people that are leading entire lives of hardship in slums. The more people try to obscure these "harsher" or more specific words, to make ugly things sound less ugly, to not give a face to specific realities, the more the general public will forget about them or brush them aside. The less people will work toward eliminating the horrible inequalities in societal, political, and economic norms that lead people into lives of devastation. Finally, the UN Global Report on Human Settlements 2003--The Challenge of the Slums uses the word "slumdweller," as do Indian newspapers. It's time we all recognized that slumdwellers, millions of them, exist all over the world and the gross inequalities that lead to their living situations, not the word slumdwellers, should offend us.