Today we had a couple of hours to kill in the afternoon so we went down to an area called Commercial Street ("I used to like this area before they sold out and became so commercial, ha ha"). We went to an area which turned out to be the Muslim quarter. I have to admit I was a little nervous walking by the mosque as Friday sermons were beginning.
Like always there were plenty of pushy vendors but I learned that those are mostly in the street. If you go into the stores some of them tend to be less pushy-but they will talk your ear off trying to tell you why you should buy their product.
I did see a couple of interesting things but they were basically just tchotchkes so I didn't buy anything, and I have absolutely no interest in silk, so I began to grow a little bored. I went ahead on my own, albeit a little apprehensively, but I became more confident as people seemed to leave me to myself for the most part. I decided instead of taking a taxi/rickshaw I would take a chance and try winding my way back to the hotel, knowing full well all I had to do was make eye contact with a taxi and they would take me to the hotel if I couldn't find it.
Then I saw the weirdest thing. There were four men who, for lack of a better word, were Hindu transvestites. They were asking everyone for money-not just westerners like me but everyone. They were really spooky but after they finally passed me (after asking me for money of course) I felt sorry for them. Talk about untouchable! I think even here they were pretty much freakshows. I sort of felt like maybe God was trying to tell me something.
I kept walking back to the hotel and noticed the building in the picture below. You don't see too many churches here so I decided to take a picture. Afterwards I saw a young man walking by and decided to ask him where the Chancery Hotel was. He didn't seem to understand, which was weird because most people speak English here. But there was an older man walking behind us and he pointed it out to me. He began to talk me up a little bit so I figured he probably wanted some money, but he just seemed so gentle and nice that I decided I would talk to him a little while and give him 10 or 20 rupees for the favor of telling where the hotel was. As we were talking, a constable walked by and began to eye us warily. I think he was going to shoo the man away but I nodded to him that it was okay.
The man said he was from Madrassa and be had come here looking for work, but that the only work was for young men with computer skills. True enough I knew. He was 54 years old and mostly only knew farming. He began telling me about his children and how he was trying to keep them in school. I knew it was a pitch but it also seemed like the truth. As he was talking about his kids and his frustration with not being able to find work his voice cracked and his eyes teared up.
If you're a cynic you could say this was all part of an act but I don't think so. I think the man was just tired, hot and frustrated with his life, and was happy to unload some of his frustration on another human being (he had no family or friends in the area). He said every day he prays to God but nothing seems to happen. If you know anything about Hinduism you know there are literally thousands of gods so I asked him which one he prays to. He reached into his tunic and showed me a necklace with a cross on it and said "Jesus."
Now, you have to realize that when people talk about religion in India you usually hear something like it is 90 to 95% Hindu and only 5 to 10% Muslim/Christian/other so this is pretty rare. My eyes brightened up and I told him I too was a Christian. I asked if he faced any extra persecution in this country for being a Christian but he said no, which actually in my mind blended even more credibility to his story. If he was just scamming me, and I had just admitted being a Christian too, he would have played up the persecution angle to gain some empathy. I also asked him if his kids were in Christian school and he said no but it was a private school. Again, a con would have probably lied about that and said yes they were in Christian school.
I decided I needed to give this guy the 20 bucks I could have easily spent on junk souvenirs. I don't say this to brag-if I were a better Christian I should have given them more. If you can't tell already I'm pretty cynical about these little Christian stories people occasionally e-mail you so I am hesitant to over-spiritualize things like this. But if you call yourself a Christian and believe what the Bible says then you know that God is in control of everything and nothing happens by chance.
Then I remembered where I had started talking to the man. Across the street where I had stopped to take a picture of the Indian Bible Society. Cue the "Twilight Zone" music please. And if you think of it when you say your prayers tonight throw one up there for Antoni and his two children.
