"There Are Two Indias"

Dear Sabia,

On Tuesday my mentor teacher, Subha, took me to visit the second schools St. John's supports with fundraisers and donations. These schools are located in highly impvierished areas of Kolkata. Subha had warned me several times before we visited that the neighborhoods we were going to pass through are very poor. I was not prepared for what very poor meant. The first school we visited was in a neighborhood that consisted of streets that narrowly progressed into a kind of cul-de-sac. The street near the school was so narrow that our driver could not fit the tiny, Ford Fiesta sized car down it. We got out and walked to a low-ceilinged building that functions as a community hall for marriages, festivals, etc. The school rents space from the landlord at a rate I thought was exorbitant for such a dingy ill lit building, but where else can there be a school? About 35 students greeted us with a "Good morning, ma'am", face lit in expectation. The room we entered was hot and a little crowded. There were no decorations on the walls, no posters or drawings. Only three chalkboards and the rows of tired benches and tables gave in indication that a school operated here.
Although st. John's is a girls school, boys are included in instruction at second schools, and instruction begins at the same age as it does at St. Johns, age three. The students also wear uniforms just like the girls at St. Johns. The boys in dark blue slack, the little ones in short pants.
One of the students placed a garland of tube roses around my neck as a show of honor, though to be honest I was the one honored. For the next twenty minutes or so, Subha and I were treated to recitations and songs from the littlest to the eldest students. The eldest would leave eventually to study at nearby English medium schools or at free night schools that allowed them to study for Board examinations.
One very lucky girl would be absorbed into the St. Johns school proper, her tuition waived, her supplies donated. Seven such girls go to St. Johns right now, and a new one will join soon.
The children at this school come from home lives heartbreakingly similar to those in America, unemployment, broken families, alcohol and drug abuse, but with one monsterous difference: the children at this school have no social safety nets. None. Not free schooling beyond the two and a half hours provided by St. John's; not health care, not child protection services to remove them from dangerous or exploitative situations, nor a food program to keep them nourished.
All of the social programs that people complain about in America as coddling the poor and keep them from work are simply not here, and the results are sad, and cautionary. I'm not trying to compare America to India, they are two very different countries with different cultures, histories, and needs. But humans have basic nessessities, adequate food, proper shelter, access to education to allow them to change their life. Life without these seems to be,well depressing, an endless cycle of poverty and sickness. When the basic needs if all people are cared for, life seems to get a lot better for everyone.
Education seems to be a key component in the quality of life, yet at this community the facilities for the students were only available for two and a half hours a day. And community members grumbled that the school shouldn't be in their neighborhood to begin with. Without an education it's hard to know the value of education, with an education it's difficult to know the approximate worth of that education.
India has millions of students working hard everyday to get into the top college slots in the country, or to prove themselves worthy to study abroad. Countless still are the children in neighborhoods like the ones I visited, cheap labor for their parents, or the only breadwinner in an ailing family.
"There are two Indias", Subha has told me more than once. The India of the Oberoi Grand Hotel, Park Street, South City Mall. This India is really indistinguishable from the US, busy, happy Indians spending money and enjoying life; drinking coffee or chai, shopping for salweer suits or sarees, reading books and investing in the future. It's a bright hopeful India, full of energy and promise. Then there is the India I saw very briefly, children manning counters or running errands. Men gambling, or hauling goods on bicycle rickshaws or pushcarts, women endlessly washing and scrubbing, carrying water, cooking. The elderly seemingly wasting away, their bodies no good for work, they might care for a child or tend small stoves. This is an India seemingly left behind, at least to my western eyes, things here have gone on as they always have.
Of course in the end, I am a foreign visitor, and have an incomplete understanding of what I see, I can only think, 'thank God education is free at home' and come home and teach.