Quote:
Originally Posted by cmac2012
Great reads. One of my best friends says that even with all the chaos he never feels quite so alive as when he's in India. Not sure if I'd share that feeling but I'd like to go someday.
I use to always want a Matchless 500cc single cylinder but there were never that many of them in existance, I don't think. I did have a BSA Victor back around '73 - a 441cc single. Lotta torque. Fun to drive.
Hard to imagine the life of driving a pedi-cab all day and sleeping in it at night. Probably the only way to keep it from getting stolen.
But as far as the society allowing such poverty, could be that when sheer numbers/density gets that far along, nothing can be done about it.
|
I agree that there is a sense of vitality associated with so many people moving in such tight places.
Not sure I agree on the poverty issue, at least with some portion of it. It seems that basic sanitation could be provided for everyone with relatively little expense. 65 million Indians **** on the ground every day. Looking out of our expensive hotel room in Delhi on to the abandoned lot next door, one could always observe at least 5 people taking a **** at any given time. Driving down the road, it was routine to see guys taking leaks everywhere.
Being a canoeist/water/river guy, the thing that disturbed me the most was the condition of Indian waters. I saw no river, stream, or puddle that was not a cesspool. The Yamuna river which flows directly in front of the Taj Mahal can be smelt from quite a distance. It is nothing but a seething moving cesspool in which kids play and adults bathe. Even at our hotel which was over a mile away the smell of sewage filled the air. The tributaries of the river running thru the town are nothing but glaciers of garbage which instead of sliding downstream on their own melt, are greased along by the slowly slithering human excrement moving at their base. Imagine your own town with no garbage pick up, no enclosed sewers and no water treatment plants. Your trash would migrate from your house into the open sewer gutter running directly in front. If you were lucky, the gutter would have some stone covering so you wouldn't have to walk thru it or directly over it. The trash would slowly float down your street towards the nearest tributary of the nearest river. At that tributary it would eventually consolidate into a feet thick giant glacier of trash inching its way down the landscape towards the river. At it's leading edge, sections would calve off, floating on the black water towards the next obstacle where it would await the monsoon rains hoping to be flushed downstream.