The Mud People

Theo closed her eyes and saw sparkles. It was a sort of shimmering in her head, but it was hard to say whether it was a sight, smell or sound. Pixie dust! It was the trace left behind by her father. In her mind, she followed it from the bed to the bathroom and then off into space.

It lead her to a place she wouldn't normally go. Not a particularly happy place. A place of chaos, heartbreak and wasted human potential. Not a tourist attraction by any means.

She stood in a dense warren of mud-walled shacks separated by narrow dirt streets not wide enough for cars. A slum of some kind. The "houses," if you could call them that, had walls 5-6 feet high built of mud bricks and topped by corrugated tin roofs. The air was warm and filled with a pungent masala of feces, urine and spicy food. The sound: wailing babies, distant motor traffic and voices in a language she didn't understand.

Her father wasn't there. No one was. All she could see in every direction were irregular brown walls. This was truly a rat maze, and she was the rat! Somewhere in this labyrinth was her father -- or maybe not! Did she get it right? Did she really follow his trace or someone else's? Any pixie dust she had in her head was gone now, blown away by all the new sensory input of this tropical hellhole.

Her first inclination was to run away -- jump back to the motel room while she was still alone. There she could just wait for 15 minutes until her father came back. But that wasn't the game. This was Hide and Seek, and she had to either find her prey or accept ignominious defeat.

In keeping with the safety policy, she promptly started walking, acting like she belonged there and knew where she was going. She could tell already that when she encountered people, there was no way she could blend into the crowd, but it was always wise to act confident, giving no hint of weakness until you knew it was safe.

Narrow passageways lead in several directions, and the environment gave her no hint which way to go. There were certainly no street signs! However, the ground she was on had a slope to it, so she simply walked downhill, following the path of least resistance. That, too, was something her father taught her, when they were hiking in the Alpes years before: Whenever you are lost, pretend you are a raindrop and flow downhill. That will usually lead you to civilization -- or to a hopelessly deep ravine!

She passed open doorways as she walked. In the darkness inside, she caught glimpses very simple accommodations: a makeshift bed, a few pots and pans, faded photographs tacked to the mud-brick walls. She saw the edges and forms of people inside, but they apparently didn't see her. She kept moving briskly, hoping it would stay that way.

As she came around a bend, she sensed movement and noise in the path ahead -- some activity blocking her way. Children! When she went a little further, she saw them: a boy and girl, maybe four years old, dressed in tattered rags and playing in the middle of the road with toys that were little more than pieces of trash: a soda bottle, a loop of wire. When they saw her they stopped and stared with shock and amazement, like they were seeing a creature from outer space. Then they both ran into to a nearby doorway, shouting what Theo could only assume was, "Mom, Mom! Come look at this!" Theo kept walking briskly, hoping to slip from view before a mom came out.

And then she turned a corner and found him -- her dad -- standing in the middle of the lane with a big smile on his face.

"You did it!" he said. "You found me! Another feather in your cap!"

"This place creeps me out," she said. "It ain't Disneyland!"

"No," he said. "It's the opposite of Disneyland. This is reality. This is how most people live."

There were many eyes on them now. People were coming out of doorways to see the aliens. The women wore saris and the men wore baggy pants and linen shirts.

"Let's walk, shall we?" said Dad, and they continued downhill on the narrow lane.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"You tell me."

"India?"

"Excellent! You might have also said Pakistan or Bangladesh, but India it is! I'm not sure what city. When you're out here on the outskirts, there's not a lot to distinguish them."

"So what's the attraction of this place?"

"None whatsoever. It's completely average and ordinary."

"Is this some kind of lesson?"

"There's a lot of slums we could go to -- Brazil, Haiti, Indonesia -- but those of India are relatively safe. There's law and order here. There's some social stability. At least you can take a walk without being murdered. It's very important not to kill your students if you can avoid it."

The road was getting a little wider, and the sounds of motor traffic grew louder, but there were still no vehicles in sight apart from a well-used bicycle leaning against a wall. Then they rounded a bend and -- Whoa! -- there was a vehicle for you: a four-legged one. A cow standing in the middle of the road! She was a scrawny beast, bones poking out all over. She was untethered, with no human owner present. Just a cow in the road, blocking their path.

"Oh my God!" said Theo. "What's that doing here?"

"You've heard of sacred cows?" said Dad. "Well there's one of them. They're gods essentially, so no one can bother them. They come and go as they please. Sort of like us!"

"How do we get by?"

"She'll move. We'll just stand aside and let her do what she wants."

Theo and her dad backed up against a wall and let the cow take the initiative. She eyed them wearily then lumbered slowly ahead, eventually passing them by. Then they continued walking downhill.

"I want you to notice something," he said. "There are cows wandering the streets. There are people living in mud huts with no sanitation. Yet look at these streets: They're almost clean!"

Indeed, the alley they were in, although paved with dirt, was relatively clear of debris. I little rivlet of fetid liquid trickled down one side of the lane, probably a combination of urine, wash water and who knows what else, but there was very little trash.

"Where's all the shit?" said Dad. "The cow manure. The human feces."

"I don't care to hunt for it," said Theo.

"But don't you regard it as a mystery? Where did it all go?"

"No, but you obviously do. What's the answer?"

"We'll find out."

"Can't wait," said Theo.

They rounded one more bend and finally saw the traffic they had heard for a while. There were vehicles of every kind speeding by: cars, trucks, bus, motorbikes, bicycles, bicycle rickshaws, motor rickshaws.... The traffic spewed smoke, dust and sound: motors roaring, horns honking, people shouting. As they emerged into the open, they found themselves in a modern city -- sort of. It was a glorious mess of humanity! The buildings on the other side of the street were of dilapidated concrete, two and three stories high, with power and telephone wires strung haphazardly between them like the web of a very sloppy spider. On the sides and tops of the buildings were billboards for cell phone companies written in English and in a script Theo assumed was Hindi. However, the street below was populated by human souls who might have come from centuries before. Woman in saris carried baskets on their heads. Men hauled homemade bricks in primitive wheelbarrows. Children in shabby clothes ran unattended in the street, obviously not going to school.

As Theo and her dad reached the main street, they could look back at the place they came from. It was a huge mud-brick slum climbing like a fungus up the hillside. There was obviously no plan to it; people just built whatever they could get away with. Separating the chaos of the slum from the slightly more organized chaos of the main street was a low brick wall. Neatly stack on top of the wall were many brown disks, about 6 inches in diameter. They looked like mud pies, carefully formed in a saucer shape. Women sat on the dirt behind the wall, feeble babies in their arms. Apparently, they were selling these mud pies.

"There's your shit!" said Dad.

"Huh?" said Theo.

"That's the cow manure that's missing from the street."

"What's it used for?"

"Cooking."

"Yum! Tasty!"

"Not in the food, dummy! It is burned as fuel. With your money, you could probably buy the whole lot!"

"Gee, I'd like to, but you know I couldn't carry it home."

"These people are the Untouchables, the Dalits, the lowest caste of Indian society. They are supposed to do the work that no one else will, like collecting shit from the streets. That was their village we were walking through. Or I should say, that was the village of the upper-class Dalits, those with homes and a little bit of ground to call their own."

"Is that still legal in India, that sort of discrimination?"

"No, but it's still here, isn't it? People are just doing what they need to do to survive, then procreating at the first opportunity."

"God, this is horrible!" said Theo, looking down at a malnourished baby languishing in his mother's arms. The mother also looked weak and emaciated. She could do little more than look up at Theo from her seat on the ground. Slowly, she raised her bony hand upward, obviously asking for a handout.

Theo looked at her dad. "What do we do?" she said.

"You tell me. It's a lot different than your bum on the boardwalk, isn't it?"

"We can't just let them starve."

"What else can we do?"

"Give her some money maybe?"

"Personally, I don't have any rupees. All I have is Ben Franklin. What do you have?"

"Ben Franklin."

"You could give her that. You gave one to the homeless guy. Isn't she just as deserving? You know she'll use it for food, not drugs."

"This is confusing," said Theo. "If I give her a hundred, then what about all these other woman and children who look just as badly off?"

"That's a dilemma, my dear."

"We could change some of our money into the local currency. Maybe lots of small bills. Then we can distribute them more fairly."

"If that's your plan, we can try it. Maybe if we walk along the street we'll find a money changer, someone who will take our Ben Franklin and give us rupees."

"Okay, which way?"

"Let's try that way," he said, indicating the left, which lead downhill apparently toward the city center.

They left the woman and her baby behind and started walking along the busy thoroughfare. The side of the road was intermittently dirt and crudely paved sidewalk. Fronting the sidewalk were shops of all kinds, and on the sidewalk itself vendors had set up tables selling everything from movies to clothing. And of course food! It was cooked right there on the street, perhaps with those same cow patties they had just seen. Some of the food smelled quite good!

"We won't be eating here," said Dad above the din. "Not unless you want to be deathly ill for the next two weeks. We do not eat or drink in the Third World. There are microorganisms here your body has no experience with."

It was getting too noisy to talk, so they just pushed ahead through the crowd in search of their objective. Street vendors aggressively offered merchandise to them but were ignored. They also passed crippled and emaciated beggars with outstretched hands and cups. Theo wanted to donate but couldn't. "No rupees!" she tried to say to them.

After about ten minutes of walking along the teeming street, they found something like a bank. The man behind the counter spoke some English, and Theo told him what they wanted: Lots of small rupee bills in exchange for her U.S. hundred. They probably got a terrible exchange rate, but they came out of the bank with an impressive wad of bills, far more than they could possibly jump with. Theo held the wad because it was her money -- the last of the drug money her dad had given her in Paris.

They headed back to the Dalit slum the same way they came, pushing past the street vendors. But when a crippled beggar held his cup toward Theo, she stopped, peeled off one of the rupee notes and stuck it in the cup. She had no idea what a rupee was worth or how much she gave him, but the beggar looked pleased and bowed his head in gratitude.

Next, they came to a child beggar, maybe five or six years old, wearing a well-practiced look of angelic innocence. Theo gave him 100 rupees. He looked at the bill with astonishment, but instead of running away with it, he held out his hand for more. "No," said Theo, "that's all."

Soon other children got a hint of what was happening, and four or five of them were at Theo's feet, hands outstretched. She paid off each of them with the smallest bills she had.

"Now you've done it," said Dad. "It's not going to end."

Indeed, a whole horde of children was now following them. For every child she gave money to, two more seemed to appear. Giving them money certainly made them happy, so much so that they told their friends. The news ran up and down the street like electricity: The aliens were giving away free money!

By the time they got back to the slum, Theo had an entourage of about thirty children. She felt like the Pied Piper! Her money was getting low, though, and she worried what would happen next.

"This mob could get mean," said Dad, looking at Theo's pint-size followers. "We might be trapped here."

Theo remembered that they couldn't jump when people were looking. They needed to find someplace alone for a few seconds, and in the press of a crowd, they might not get it. She often had nightmares about that: being trapped in a riot, swept along be an angry crowd and not being able to escape. It felt a lot like drowning.

"Yeah," said Theo, "I'm getting a little scared. I didn't realize this would happen."

"Give me some rupees!" said Dad, stretching his own hand out above the children.

Theo laughed. "Sure, how many would you like?"

"200 rupees," said Dad. "That should be enough. I want to be sure I have it before you run out."

Theo examined the bills in her dwindling wad and gave her Dad two 100-rupee notes. She didn't give any more money to the children, though, because she wanted to fulfill her original objective: helping the emaciated mother and her baby. Still the horde of children danced along beside them. It had become a game to them. Just the hope of a reward was enough to keep them playing.

When they got back to the cow patties stacked on the wall, the dying woman and infant were still there. Theo took her largest denomination rupee note and placed it in the woman's hand. The woman accepted it passively, but there was no smile, no joy. She didn't thank Theo for this large sum of money -- at least she uttered no words. She just accepted the gift as though it was of no consequence. She didn't get up. She just continued sitting there listlessly, holding her fragile baby.

Theo looked at her dad, but he said nothing. He was like an anthropologist studying another anthropologist who was studying the natives. Clearly, he was drawing conclusions, but she would probably have to wait to hear them.

Theo gave away her remaining bills to other mothers languishing nearby, then she held up her open hands to show the children: "No more rupees!"

Once it was clear there would be no more handouts, most of the children left, but a few of them stayed. This is when you find out who your real friends are! The children who stayed had bright, mischievous eyes and smiled easily when Theo smiled at them. They were apparently there out of curiosity, trying to understand the strange aliens who had tumbled into their world. They looked like normal, healthy, intelligent children, full of joy and humor, who just happened to be born in the wrong place. They were not yet cynical, broken or hardened. That would come later.

As Theo and her dad walked, the children followed them. It was endearing at first, but it make it impossible to jump.

"We have to be careful of these little ones," said Dad. "If we suddenly vanish, even if they don't see it directly, it's going to be the biggest event of their lives. There's no telling how it will change them."

"So how do we escape?"

"That's why I saved some rupees. We'll exit by conventional means."

As Theo entertained the children with funny faces, her dad stepped to the street to hail a ride. He flagged down a motor rickshaw. This was essentially a three-wheeled motorcycle with a cab attached to the back, just big enough for two people. Dad got in and Theo followed. She waved goodbye to the children and they waved back.

Then they sped away.

With hand signals, Dad directed the driver to an industrial area where fewer people were in the street. They stopped at a place that made no sense to the driver -- a blind alley. They got out there, paid the driver, and he puttered away.

"Had enough?" said Dad.

"Quite enough, thank you," said Theo.

"Let's go back to the Inn."

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