Places

Old Delhi is alive. It’s a city brimming with exotic smells and noises and sights and feelings. Taken in all at once, it’s almost a sensory overload. The first rickshaw that almost runs you over is startling. The first person who grabs at you for being white and a woman is aggravating. The first small boy who sticks out his stump of an arm to ask for a rupee is horrifying. After a while, your body deadens and your mind hardens to make everything easier to deal with.

I feel like that little boy might be seared into my memory. Not what he looked like. I probably couldn’t even describe him if I tried. My eyes seemed to almost involuntarily slide away from the image, unable to accept it as reality. But the feeling I felt when I saw him- a blend of pity and revulsion with a dash of fear and a sprinkling of guilt- that is locked in. I didn’t give him a rupee.