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| Welcome to India |
Good morning again, this time from Delhi, India. Awoke to a dense fog out my window, obscuring any possible view of the hotel surroundings, the only hint being the far-off sound of plaintive horns and a single voice singing a chant. Later the fog cleared and we drove around Dellhi, or I should say a driver drove us, past the old British Parliament and government buildings and the India Gate. Wide boulevards laid out by the Brits, with some help from Daniel Burnham of Chicago fame apparently, lined with parks and high-rise apartment and office buildings. In the same block, blue tarp shanties lean on wrought-iron fences near construction sites where workers try to stay as close to the work site as possible in order to get at the jobs. In the streets people sell everything from cell-phone chargers to rags for wiping down your car. A woman in a red sari, wielding a pick-axe forcefully to break up the earth and rocks in a ditch. A bearded man pedaling a tricycle with a load of dry earth mounded in the back, like an engine-less pick-up truck with a necessarily miniscule load being all he could manage to haul by the fruit of his own labors. People moving everywhere under their own steam, and toiling to bring others along with them. Beggars at the car windows, tapping ever more forcefully to be sure you don't mean to open up and offer a hand-out. Urban legend has it that beggars have been found holding large sums of cash but have no idea how to obtain goods or access to a better life with it, they have been left so far beyond the edges of society. We have no idea what it means to toil at our work as do so many of the people I saw just today on the streets of Delhi. We have no idea. . .
