Oliver's Playdate at Hauz Khas

Hauz Khas means “royal water tank” and seems to be an overlooked historical site in Delhi.  It is located in a neighborhood called Hauz Khas Village, near the Hauz Khas metro stop of all places.  Hauz Khas Village is a string of upscale but interesting shops and winding offshoots, and includes Kunzum, a traveler’s café that serves excellent coffee (yes, real drip coffee of the best sort, not Nescafe) and tea as well as delicious dipping biscuits and is a pay-as-you-like setup.  It’s also a photo gallery and is full of great travel books and of course, interesting people.  Wonderful find by Sarah.

Oliver at Kunzum Cafe

Anyway, Hauz Khas.  Parts of it are 800 years old!  Entrance to the ruins is free, you can climb all over the place, the signage is informative, and it is better upkept than many other tourist sites in Delhi.  I’m thinking especially of the Red Fort, supposedly the icon of icons, that is expensive to get in, lacks signs with historical information (or any information, for that matter) and is rundown and seeping with herds of leering creepsters.  Beyond the ruins, Hauz Khas is a legitimately nice park to have a picnic and just pass the day basking in the sun.  We found a nice place and plopped down to play with Oliver and relax.

Near us was a group of laboring women who were taking their lunch break with their very young children.  I had noticed them as we sat down and was, in all honesty, hoping to avoid interaction because they were dirty and the kids all had runny noses and who knows what else.  I soon realized that I would have to get over my apprehensions, open up, and relax as the kids, being curious, approached us.  At first they just sat next to Oliver, looking at him, looking at his toys, then started gently touching him and smiling.  Oliver, being the little flirt he is, was smiling at them as well.  Children are so innocent; they are completely blind to boundaries to which the most educated of adults hold themselves.

Little by little, we started playing more and more with the kids, talking as much as we could with their mothers, and wondering what the other families around us (fairer skinned and upper class) thought of our interaction with these “street people.”  We had such a great time watching the kids play with Oliver’s rattle ball that we made sure that the mothers understood that they could keep it and that they hadn’t taken it from us.  One of the kids squeezed himself into Oliver’s sweatshirt, so I counted that as gone as well; it’s not like it would break me to buy him another one, but these kids probably froze outside every night.  Their mothers went back to work nearby, leaving a very small baby in the care of a child that surely wasn’t even two years old.  Heartbreaking—imagine having to leave a defenseless baby with his siblings who are themselves so young that they could easily smother him or otherwise hurt him without realizing it.  Witnessing things like this while surrounded by plenty, as a Mercedes drives by, for example, make me feel so small here.  I can watch this baby for a few hours, but what will happen tomorrow?

I must say that inequality in India is sickening.  I am not saying this from a perspective that blindly and “patriotically” sees the US as perfect or even the best.  I can say that being in India has made me realize that for all our imperfections and shortfalls as Americans, the idea of justice and equality really is hammered into our psyche, and for the most part, we live it out.  It bothers me, and I think I can safely say that it would bother any random American, that servants of the upper class sleep in shacks without proper beds (euphemism: servants’ quarters) either outside or in a separate part of the mansion even though there are extra bedrooms inside.  It bothers me that servants are invariably darker than their employers.  It bothers me to go to a fancy luncheon, where everybody is eating and drinking from plentiful tables, everybody except the dark-skinned maid taking care of some rich woman’s children.  It bothers me to see servants belittled instead of given thanks, especially when people are so incredibly dependent on their servants for basic, basic things...I swear that if somehow every servant went on strike, the entire country would screech to a halt.  It bothers me that my favorite bar of chocolate costs a little under $2, which is approximately equal to the official minimum daily wage.

Why?  Why is it like this?  Is it the “democracy” that is only a façade, and a crumbling one at that?  Is it the rush to emulate the US at its worst, to consume material goods like there’s no tomorrow?  To pursue “development” at all costs?  Too often, it seems to be no more than a dog-eat-dog whirl in which no one cares or pays attention to the “collateral damage,” to use a phrase from Arundhati Roy.  In her book Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy, she tells the untold stories about the elephants in the room: politicians who overtly call for the extermination of Muslims and the lowest rungs of society, who publicly boast of the number they have killed, how truly democratic movements for freedom from military occupation in Kashmir and from corporate mining interests in central India are strategically labeled as “extremist,” “Maoist,” “Naxalist,” to make way for their demise.

We played with some kids at Hauz Khas; I felt ashamed that I had intended to ignore them.