The other day I was sitting on a park bench, having a candy bar for lunch, when this tall, skinny girl of about 9 years walked up and asked me for money in a whisper. A younger, spunkier boy was by her side. He kept shaking his head from side to side – the version of the Indian head bobble I usually see in Delhi – which in this case implied a question: Will you or will you not give my sister(?) and I money for a meal?
They were malnourished. The girl’s hair was a dull auburn, rather than the black that it should have been. Most of the street kids have reddish hair. I thought it was because they put henna in it, which many Indians do to color and nourish their hair, but then I read that red hair is a sign of nutrient deficiency.
The girl was very thin. She was the skinniest girl and future basketball player in her 4th grade American class. In another life or another universe anyway.
She stood about 4 feet away from me. Further than most Indians would in this context and much further than most street children when begging. Did she get my culture that quickly? No, she’d probably begged from a few hundred white girls in her short 9 years.
She stared at me and I stared at her as she kept whispering her request for money in Hindi and I kept denying it in English. It went on like this for a couple minutes, with her little brother impatiently hanging at my side not understanding all this silence and more and more boisterously asking for money. Transactions probably usually didn’t take this long.
I guess the girl could tell that I cared that she was suffering or that things were otherwise shifting in her favor. She seemed to read through the layers of my response: my stern No’s, but also my unwillingness to not look at her and empathize some. Beggars are emotional geniuses. Their lives depend on it.
As she stared at me I had the urge to cry. I stared back and finally let her in my heart and gave her some money from my wallet. As I did I began to feel a little lighter. Less angry or depressed, which is the landscape I’ve been spending a lot of time in recently. I got to feel a little effective in a time in my life when I rarely do. I got to feel seen, instead of stared at, as I usually do. I don’t know if I was. That poor and glorious girl probably just wanted food and would have implied anything she thought I wanted her to so she could get it. Or maybe not. Who knows? I felt shame that I had the power to feed these two kids and they didn’t. It was a power I shouldn’t have had and an indignity that they didn’t deserve.
India keeps breaking my heart, pushing me to my knees and making me feel again. I want to run away. I want to hide from the throbbing humanity. But even hiding is painful because I also want to be a part of it. In the end I’m left there on the ground and all I can say is: Why? Mumbling like a crazy person or whispering in need like a starving 9 year old girl.
I keep coming back to why I both love and hate, treasure and fear, these interactions with street kids, begging mothers with infants and 14 year old boys who do my laundry instead of their homework and I think I understand it better now. Street kids can’t hide their vulnerability like the rest of us. They’re dirty, ill-fitting clothes and matted red hair clearly say: I need. Many of us, maybe most of us in this wide world, can and often do hide our need, our vulnerability, our pain, loss, failure and brokenness. When we see it in someone else, so clearly and with such immediacy, we remember it in ourselves and we want to reach out and heal it. In them and in ourselves.
A phrase has been running through my mind the past few weeks: Every time we save someone else, we save ourselves. In helping, we become that person who would save us were the tables turned, creating with our act or acts a world we want to live in, a world worthy of our lives. One where we care for each other. One where people are the social safety net. One where what we have to give and what we choose to give is sufficient to meet what is needed.
And in doing this, in helping someone in whatever way we might, we’re brought back into our deeper feeling selves. We get to experience all those feelings we usually lodge a few inches below the surface; sometimes painful, sometimes joyful and, at least here, often both at the same time.
The other day I was riding in a rickshaw. As the driver and I were pulling up to a stop light I looked out of the vehicle and my eye caught a little girl’s who was standing on the side of the road. When she saw me her face lit up, her body became erect and she gave me a broad wave Hello! I watched her as she gathered up her tiny bundles of roses wrapped in cellophane and headed over to the rickshaw as it came to a stop. She smiled alternately sweetly and impishly up at me. She was a tiny 5-year old. She gestured toward her flowers and asked me to buy some. I told her No, I didn’t want to buy any flowers.
She persisted and dialed up the adorable like any great child saleswoman would. We went back and forth: No. Adorable. No. Tilt of head and smile. No. Tilt of head and frown. No. Hand to mouth to signify I need food. No. Head on seat next to me, staring up at me, bouquet bobbing side to side, silently saying: buymebuymebuyme! No.
The driver kept telling her to go away as he, like I, became increasingly wooed by her significant charms. And then the light changed and the driver demanded that she leave. She asked one more time and I said No one more time. She started walking away and left my line of vision. And then, suddenly, gently, out of nowhere, a bouquet landed on my lap. She had thrown it into the rickshaw and ran away.
The driver grabbed the bouquet from my lap and craned his neck outside the vehicle to look for the child so he could give it back. Smiling broadly and shaking his head when he couldn’t find her, he handed the bouquet back to me. I took it in awe, in disbelief of what had just happened. As the auto started up and we pulled away I held it gently in my lap and started to cry. A kid with no food, no home and apparently no family had just given me, a woman with all of these things and more, a gift. Why? Because she had a need to give? Because it wears on the soul to always be begging and never giving? Because she saw that I wanted to help but didn’t know how, so she helped me instead? Why? Why? Why?
Why for all of it? Why are kids starving and without parents? Why do I have 6 pairs of shoes and 20 tops in this country alone when this little girl’s wardrobe likely consisted of what she was wearing?
Why was she, despite her poor material circumstances, so joyful?
Why?
Sometimes the world breaks our hearts. And sometimes it should. How alive are we really if it doesn’t?
