We arrived at the train station. It looked like a scene out of an adventure film. People were bustling about busily, dressed in a mix of exotic and familiar clothing. The architecture was colonial, and the train itself looked like it was last one the British left when independence came in in 1947. Large, dusty sacks were piled against the walls. Someone had relieved himself on the platform, and the stinking pile of feces had become an uncharacteristic void space in the otherwise crowded pattern of milling people.

Once at our designated platform, we encountered some beggar children who asked us for candies and pens. We hadn't been expecting to have any downtime on the journey so we hadn't come prepared. A few people had tiny shampoo bottles from the last hotels we had stayed in back in Vietnam. One person had some hand sanitizer, and another a few Starburst. I gave a Starburst to one of the smaller children. He put it straight in his mouth without unwrapping it. We made him spit it back out into my hand and we showed him how to unwrap it. Logic, only seconds behind action, asked for the hand sanitizer to clean the resulting saliva from my hands. We unwrapped some more for the others until they were all gone. Next they wanted to know what the hand sanitizer was. A girl poured a little in a child's hand and it went straight into his mouth. She let out a cry and he sheepishly brought his hands down from his face. She showed him how when you rubbed your hands together quickly the hand sanitizer made them feel cool and tingly. Soon all of the children wanted to try it and we were passing out hand sanitizer right and left to a great many hands that may have never been clean.

The older girls all had baby siblings that they carried, and were a little shy. Two young boys were the oldest in the group and one was sweet and mild mannered while the other was mischevious and pushy. We naturally favored the sweet one and someone decided to give him the shampoo. Fearing a repeat of earlier occurrences, she pantomimed what one does with shampoo. She gave it to him and he put it immediately into his dry hair, plastering it to the side unnaturally. The mischevious boy was jealous and he tried to grab the shampoo bottle from the other boy. A tussle ensued and the bottle fell off the platform onto the rails. Our boy jumped down after it, scattering a pack of large rats that was eating the trash and refuse that littered the rails. We watched tensely as our boy leaped between the rails and finally made it back onto the platform before the train came. He put the shampoo bottle in his breast pocket proudly, even though it was covered in shampoo and no longer had a lid.



If I had had the means to raise him, I would have kidnapped him on the spot.


Whatever you say about India, the reverse is also true

That is a terribly depressing recountal.
» randomjunk on 2008-06-19 12:43:29

You went to India??
» Nuttz on 2008-06-19 02:05:22

True, it is depressing to think about the kinds of lifestyles that exist outside our own...it's sad, but it also gives me a reason to be happy, that I'm so fortunate to have what I do have.

That bit about the rats was particularly eye-opening.

And I know this is tangential, but your background intrigues me...and I can't even figure out what it is.
» The-Muffin-Man on 2008-06-19 02:06:10

"Chapter one, Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics...

"Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.

"Perhaps it would be wise to approach the subject cautiously."

---David L. Goodstein, States of Matter (1985, p. 1)
» ranor on 2008-06-19 10:02:59

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