Room for the River

(this essay has been published in NPR's essay section.
http://www.thisibelieve.org/dsp_AdvancedSearch.php
First name: Julie , Last name: Ray)

I looked at my over flowing Gokhi Baba cache in the puja room. My grand father (on my father’s side) had passed on the name of this lost and found saint to my mother when she married into the Acharya family. She has passed it on to us. I passed it to my in laws. Gokhi Baba was a virtuous person who found lost objects with a very good probability. As a habit, before we start to look for a lost or misplaced item, we place some small change dedicated to Gokhi Baba any where in the house and start looking for the object in question. In all these years the probability of a miss has been contained to 1 percent.

Generally when I got enough coins accumulated, I would take them to the temple and give them away. That day I decided to place the coins in a plastic bag and give then to the first beggar that I would meet when I alighted from the Mudrika DTC bus at Dhaula Kuan. As my stop got closer I was restless wondering whether it would be a little girl in tattered clothes or an old man without eyesight. It was mid January in Delhi. Bitterly cold. I sat huddled on the seat clutching on to my thick woolen jacket wondering how the homeless lived on the roads of Delhi. Where did they sleep? How did they ward off the cold winds?

As the bus reached the stop, I got down and my eyes met the emaciated mother with a new born clinging to her breast. I knew it was her. I had not counted the money in the pouch but it was definitely over 50 rupees in coins and notes which also spoke of the times we had lost something or the other! I handed the bag to her. She looked a little confused because she could not see what was inside. Thrusting it at her I walked away. I decided not to look back as I did not want to be a part of the pleasure that wasn’t really mine. The art of giving is far more complicated than receiving. It is difficult to negate the feeling of pride as you give away. I decided to not partake of this pride. But I did think of the young woman often. What did she buy with the money? Milk for the little one or clothes? Did she have more kids at home?

In this land of overflowing food and drinks and so many options at that, I have thought many times of our homeless people (those that I left in India) and likened them to the ones on the streets of downtown Baltimore. They looked the same. Only in my own selfish way I could not love them as much. I still thought that the poor in India were mine.

Today I filled several cans of peaches, pears, peas, mushroom, chicken noodle soup and Rice Krispies into a paper bag. I have been a regular buyer of snack items that are of no interest to my children. Either they don’t like it or they have grown out of it. I chide them at their carelessness with food. ‘God never gives back what you throw down the garbage’, I keep telling them. I am sure they hear me but I am not sure they care.

This young girl I meet every weekday. As the lights turn red at Lee Road, right where we enter downtown, she walks past the cars. She looks like any other homeless soul. In her 30s, she is very thin, with a mess of unkempt hair on her head, wearing an over sized men’s jacket that hides most of her body, in men’s boots and dirty trousers. She holds a rough board in her gloveless hands that says “Homeless Please Help”. Today in the icy cold January winds, she walked down the road as the lights remained red. I saw her coming towards my car. I tried to catch her attention. The same lost look as on the streets of Delhi. The look that said that they had given up on life, but were forced to live. I picked up the bag from the side seat and opened the window. I recognized an instant moment of happiness in those green eyes. I lifted the bag to her. She bent down and took it from my hands. Then she looked at me and said two words that pierced into my heart like a knife: GOD BLESS. I bit my lip trying to stop the tears. She needed the blessings more than me.

The lights changed colors. The cars started to move and I did what I would not do. I watched her from the rear view mirror. All I could see was her back receding away from me as the car sped forward. I continued to watch her back to feel the relief of not having to scavenge for food for one more day. The river in my heart overflowed its boundaries. It needed more room. To cry. To give.

‘Room for the River’ is the name of a Dutch flood operation along the river Rhine where the water levels are predicted to rise every year. I heard about it on NPR today. I loved the name.