Cocoon of privilege
“Do you feel transformed?” asked a friend after I returned from India.
People envision India as a mystical land in which people make pilgrimages to ashrams and yogic retreats in scenic spots. My idea of a spiritual quest involves art, tasty food, a fiery sunset, a peaceful walk in nature, water, reflective solitude, reading, creating, petting my cat, great conversations. These are all things I experience everyday.
I did not go to India seeking to extract personal transformation. I’d gone to India to celebrate a friend’s wedding. People flew in from all over the world to Mumbai, where everyone stayed in the Four Seasons Hotel for several days. We shopped for wedding attire and acquainted ourselves with the stomping ground of the bride’s youth. Then we flew south to the state of Kerala for the actual festivities, which took place over three days at a luxury resort nestled within a nature sanctuary on the banks of an idyllic lake.
Inside our cocoon of privilege, everything was tailored for our comfort and pleasure, from the exquisite food to the frigid air conditioning to the superb service. When several women in our party needed their gowns tailored at the last minute, the Four Seasons brought a seamstress to the hotel to measure each person in the privacy of their rooms. The seamstress altered multiple dresses overnight and delivered them back to the hotel in time for our 7 AM flight to Kerala the next morning. When stepping outside the cocoon of privilege, I felt only the barest amount of discomfort, mostly caused by the relentless honking and gridlocked traffic.
I don’t normally stay at a Four Seasons, but I have the privilege of being able to earn credit card points that can pay for such luxuries on occasion. Was “transformation” even possible within such a cocoon of privilege? Would I have had a better chance at achieving enlightenment if I’d deprived myself of such luxuries and stayed in my usual decidedly downscale accommodations?
I caught glimpses of the poverty that I’d associated with India and that many believe is necessary to achieve spiritual transformation. The view from my hotel room overlooked a sea of blue tarps protecting makeshift housing from the monsoon rains. I peered through the windows of cars that transported me up and down the Mumbai peninsula and saw people living on the sidewalks, under train trestles, in nooks and crannies along the highway, their homes constructed from tarp, bamboo sticks, old sheets, and recycled materials.
I explored Mumbai in much the same way that I would have explored it regardless of where I slept at night. I walked up and down the pungent lanes of open-air markets, inhaled aromatic incense outside Jain temples, stepped in puddles of questionable liquid with open-toed shoes, strolled with throngs of people during the evening promenades, and eased into the flow of apparent chaos. I fully enjoyed returning to high-thread count sheets and a fluffy white robe each evening.
I felt a constant awareness of being a foreigner, even around the most touristy areas. In a city of 20 million people, I saw fewer than ten Westerners outside of our group during my entire stay in Mumbai. I sensed curious eyes on me, subtly reminding me of my difference, and sometimes not so subtle when a group of men asked to take photos with me. I’m accustomed to feeling like an outsider when mine is the only Asian face in a space. But this was different. Given my blond hair and Teva sandals, I may have been perceived as a Westerner, which made me feel a greater sense of power and privilege, a feeling I continue to interrogate in myself.
I tried to interpret the meaning of a gesture I’d never seen before, the head wobble. Every Indian person I interacted with did it and it seemed to mean something different each time. The wobble consisted of a bobble or side-to-side tilting motion of the head. Sometimes it indicated agreement or acknowledgment. Sometimes it meant, “I understand.” Sometimes it seemed like a non-committal response. When I tried to recreate it to ask what it meant, people denied doing it or even seeing it being done.
The closest I got to the poverty that I associated with India was in a guided tour through the Dharavi slum. I felt squeamish at first when my friend invited me to join the tour she’d booked. I didn’t want to participate in exploitative practices, such as poverty porn and slum tourism. Dharavi wasn’t a “human zoo” built for my amusement like the ones built for the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. Dharavi was a thriving community with people living their real lives. I wanted to respect people’s privacy and dignity, and I wanted to learn about worlds different from my own.
The stated purpose of the tour was to dispel stereotypes and misconceptions that have been created by movies like Slumdog Millionaire. People were very poor, yes. Many earned $30 to $60 per month, often working dangerous jobs. One million people live in an area of land that is half the size of Central Park in New York City so it’s one of the most densely populated places in the world.
Once a suburb of Mumbai, Dharavi had been subsumed by the monolithic city and now stands on some of the most valuable land in the city. Being part of Mumbai means the electricity never cuts out because Mumbai is the financial heart of India so its electrical grid is well-maintained. The water runs five to six hours per day, which is a vast improvement from the days before the government intervened when water had to be collected from barrels of rain water. Not every home has water pipes today, though, so water flows through community pipes. Old water pipes often become contaminated, though, when they crack next to sewage pipes. Residents use community bath houses where there is one toilet per 500 residents so sanitation remains a serious problem in spreading disease.
Our guide Dev walked us through the commercial heart of Dharavi where multiple industries thrived, including a recycling industry that processes 80% of Mumbai’s discarded plastic. In one section, people sort the plastic into piles of different colors. In another section, those piles of plastics get ground down by machines made from scrap metal. The crushed plastic is then washed in chemicals with bare hands. After drying in the sun, the crushed plastic is melted and reformed into long strands that are sold back to manufacturers to make new plastic products.
The government banned aluminum recycling because it was too dangerous. But Dev pointed out an aluminum recycling center and said the owner probably paid bribes to the inspectors who come through monthly. Turns out, all the industries are regulated but perhaps not to OSHA standards. Many workers slept and ate in the workshops next to the machinery and safety equipment was non-existent. Other industries in Dharavi included goat leather making, ceramics, textiles, and food production. According to Dev, no one begs in Dharavi because everyone is too busy working. He called Dharavi a “five-star slum.”
Dharavi is a city within a city that contains schools, hospitals, stores, banks, movie theaters, and everything you need without having to leave its borders. We followed Dev through a complex maze of dark, shoulder-width alleyways, past doorways open to mostly one-room homes that offered brief glimpses of domestic life. Dev said that even when people make enough money to move, they often stay because their connection to the community is so strong. He’d grown up in another slum north of the city and still lived with his parents there. I could feel his pride.
On the way back to the hotel, Dev pointed out the home of India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, who lives in a two billion dollar, 27-story tower. His family occupies the top six floors, each of the six family members has their own floor. His car collection occupies the lower six floors. A hanging garden fills four floors. A cinema, ballroom, and other amenities take up several floors. The nearly 600 staff who maintain the home occupy floors in between. The tower overlooks a slum in which residents earn two dollars a day.
Fellow Indian billionaire and philanthropist Ratan Tata said that Ambani’s home was an example of rich Indians’ lack of empathy for the poor. “The person who lives in there should be concerned about what he sees around him and asking how he can make a difference. If he cannot, then it’s sad because this country needs people to allocate some of their enormous wealth to finding ways of mitigating the hardship that people have. It makes me wonder why someone would do that. That’s what revolutions are made of.”
I know my own privilege is made possible by the same low wage labor that makes Ambani’s wealth possible, that produces the affordable goods, superb service, and cute outfits that I enjoy inside my cocoon of privilege. Walking through Dharavi and visiting India reminded me of this truth. I also discovered that India was much more than ashrams, poverty, and stark contrasts between wealth and poverty. My cosmopolitan experience of India was as real as any of the stereotypical images that have been portrayed outside its borders. In these ways, I can say to my friend, yes, I had been transformed by India.
