January 15 – 1:25PM – Paschim Express to Mumbai.

India has a population of one billion people. Look on the streets and the way people stand unnecessarily crammed and clumped together in lines, how they are comfortable brushing by you as they walk or gently touching your shoulder to get your attention. Personal comfort zones are about an inch here. In a nation of so many people, physical contact is inevitable.

Look out the window of the six hour train ride from Mumbai to Baroda or Baroda to Mumbai and you will be constantly traveling through civilization, small and large towns, countryside farms. Out of the train window there will always be a person in sight, pushing a cart, purchasing Indian snacks from a train station wallah, tending their crops, working on a crew hand digging a ditch or often relieving themselves in a field. People live close together here, lots of them.

It is probably partly because of the large population - way too many people and not a lot of employment - that as you look out your train window at the ancient countryside and city settlements streaming by that you will inevitably see a lot of poverty. It is a fact here. Small shanties and shacks line the train tracks with tarp roofs held in place by rocks and wood. Old men with long gray beards gather whatever-all-that-refuse-is on the ground. A just over two year old child watches a just over four year old child frantically yet purposefully yanking at a purple kite tied with pink string. They both are wearing shirts but are both pantless. They are both smiling. On the streets little dirty girls lightly tap your arm like brown butterflies and hold out their small hands, gesturing that they are hungry. Their eyes made to stand out by their dirt darkened faces and dust lightened hair.

With one billion people not everyone can be rich, not everyone can even be middle class. Life happens in its realest form like any biological ecosystem where the fittest survive and this survival is a constant struggle. Maybe I am jaded from past travels and from working as a TV cameraman who sees pain and death most days, maybe it sounds hard and indifferent, but it doesn’t seem to bother me, I just know that in a world with almost seven billion people struggle is a part of how life functions on this planet, both in civilization and nature. Indians here seem to ignore or shun those less fortunate. I know that any help the poor can get to survive will be gladly accepted but I have to say that I don’t see pain in the children’s eyes. They seem happy as they fly their kites or chase each other around the alleyways although I cannot guarantee that they don’t feel the pain of an empty stomach. Life at its most basic level is clearly visible. The poor and those way below the poverty line are unfortunately part of life. I believe that all people deserve basic human rights but how you ensure this, especially in a country as large as India is hard to say. No matter what though, life goes on and it is always a struggle, sometimes more so for some than for others. If you know the solution to widespread poverty I know a great place for you to start.

What I can do is value and appreciate even more deeply my own luck… and that is what it is, fortune of birth. I can be grateful that I have the opportunity to wake up at 2:00AM with bloodshot eyes to go to an early work shift, or to be angry that I forgot to move my truck and got a parking ticket, to worry that I might lose my job and not be able to buy organic apples or ground flax seed. Those are worries that I am sure millions in India would be happy to take on. I will remember the less fortunate that I have seen from my air-conditioned train window as they fly by, over and over, never to be remembered individually as separate faces but hopefully as a reminder of their mass as well of my own fortune that I have and to value and appreciate it more deeply as a privilege rather than a right. Their troubles are ones that I will never have the hard luck to experience no matter how bad I think I have it.