It's dark out now, and the narrow, dirty streets of Varanasi are crowded with revelers blaring music so loudly we hear it straight through our barely-there hotel walls.
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Filtering by Tag: poverty
Part of a school group touring the temple, these girls eagerly asked me to take a photo of them with my camera
On begging, giving, and choosing empathy in India + A tour of ancient temples
The woman pulls my hair tightly. She stabs my scalp with a bobby pin while looping a garland of orange and white flowers on either side of my ponytail.
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Driving away from an angry mob of kids swarming the rickshaw
The sting of fear, poverty & injustice in India
I am being mobbed and I'm scared.
A crowd of kids is swarming, pushing the rickshaw with me inside. My driver yells, telling them to back off. Crowd psychology has already kicked in though, and more little arms reach inside to grab me.
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On suffering, survival, & the Indian heart
I am at the hospital. A woman wearing a hijab motions for me to sit next to her.
"Where you from?" she stares up with wonder, as if she's never seen anyone so tall before. If I ever thought the frequent statement you're tall from strangers back in the States was annoying, I've come to accept that being nearly six feet in India makes me quite a giant of a superstar. Oftentimes I am wary of this attention as it can mean photo after cell phone photo with teenage boys and entire extended families. But right now, it's just a woman and a man who want to meet me, so I sit.
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