India is Burning Man

Now for those of you who have never been to Burning Man, never seen Black Rock City, never traveled to India, this post will have little meaning. But for those of you with whom we have shared a spot of playa in the past, we are telling you: India is Burning Man. Here's why:

1. Dust. Dirt. Everywhere. Under your fingernails. Coating your contact lenses. Coloring your Kleenex black. Sound familiar?

2. Every vehicle is an art car. From three wheeled trucks to city buses to cycle rickshaws. Brightly painted eyes, Shivas, and slogans such as 'India is Great' and 'Good luck' adorn the sides, fronts and backs of them all. It's magnificent.

3. No infrastructure. The roads are dirt. Generators power everything. Machinery looks like turn-of-the-century creations of belts and pulleys and flywheels. Oh, and you have to rely on bottled water. For everything.

4. A gift economy...almost. When your lunch costs $0.44, it's as good as free.

5. Sensory overload. Sights. Sounds. Smells. Scenes. Aaaahhhhh!

6. Burners, burners everywhere! Oh yeah, only here they call them sadhus - holy men swathed in robes, smoking their spliffs with big, happy grins on their faces.

And a few ways in which India is NOT like Burning Man:

1. People here are really poor, not just pretending to be poor. The poverty is heart-wrenching. We spent yesterday touring the deepest slums of Calcutta with a non-profit that provides schools, medical care and homes to street kids. And we ended up 'adopting' (sponsoring) a 12 year-old girl named Rama who was rescued just one week ago, about to be sold into sex slavery. $200/year - that's the cost of your Burning Man ticket, folks - will feed, clothe + educate her for a year.

2. Poop vs. Moop. There's no such thing as a 'Leave no trace' policy here.The streets and the rivers - even the holy river Ganges in Varanasi, the holiest of cities - are your garbage can. And your toilet. And your bathtub. Ick.

Comments

[Erica]

A friend of mine from India had a great story to tell about his family and their relationship to poop. Apparently, his grandmother would foster his family's connection to it by inquiring every morning into everyone's daily outcome. Instead of "Good morning!" or even, "How are you?" she'd ask how everyone's poop was. "Runny and thin?" or "Average consistency" were, I'd imagine, some responses that might compare to our own "Oh, fine, thank you." This kind of coprophilia (as my friend called it) and sense of familiarity--even intimacy--with not just the quality of one's excrement but also the sensation of the experience--is completely foreign to us. We try to flush it not just out of our system but out of our minds and living quarters completely. In China, "night soil" was/is considered to be a valuable resource that helps complete the cycle of growth. People used to save it in little buckets or containers and make daily pilgrimages to the places where it could be usefully deposited.

I'm not saying that we should love our shit, or that we should keep it around us all day long in the streets. (Or, for that matter, that we should use our hands to wipe our behinds--Yuck!) I'm quite happy and thankful for the modern toilet and our system of waste disposal. But it is interesting to note how different cultures encourage a variety of psychological relationships to such stinking matter.

[Steve Organ]

Your trip brings all of the memories I have of India. Poverty on a scale which I have never seen.

Do you have a way for others to sponsor children in India? Would be interested in helping.

Steve