You can’t scroll away from poverty and homelessness
This winter break, I visited my parents’ native country, India– Bandra, Mumbai to be specific. I have been there many times, and I always look forward to my trips for the delicious food, awe instilling skyscrapers and the warm smiles of my family.
Driving from the airport to my grandparents’ home and walking into their building in the city is one of my favorite feelings in the world. However, on this visit, I find myself thinking of how many hours the driver works in a day or when the groundskeepers get to see their children.
The city is filled with little taxis of a sort, called rickshaws. I often wondered where the rickshaw drivers lived and where their cars went overnight. Driving home at 3 a.m., I saw the vehicles parked in a line trailing down Carter Road. But when I looked closer, I saw that each rickshaw held a driver in the back seat sleeping, their backs bent and bodies contorted to fit in the small vehicle. At that moment, it hit me that these drivers worked all day and most of the night, 7 days a week, and could not afford a safe place to sleep.
Now that I’m older, walking through the city of Bandra makes my stomach hurt. As many lavish buildings tower into the sky, the roads are littered with homelessness and beggars. Drinking a seven dollar latte in the comfort of a cute and air conditioned café feels even more wasteful with children begging for food just outside the door. Within every fancy apartment building, each unit contains maids, drivers, groundskeepers, cooks and various servants– all of whom make only a couple dollars an hour.
It is easy to say that you care about poverty and post infographics on your Instagram story for 24 hours. But behind the colorful images, these issues continue to affect real people who never asked to be stuck in a vicious cycle. In the U.S., the idea of the “American Dream” is often used as justification to feel apathy towards the poor. Often, I have heard people argue that people who are homeless should have “studied more” or “worked harder.” Even I have made comments like these in the past. However, my perspective has since grown by seeing these issues up close, rather than making baseless assumptions rooted in ignorance. Now I see that these arguments do not take into account that most of the people affected by poverty have to work poorly compensated jobs at a young age to support their families, lack critical educational opportunities and do not even have homes to study in with electricity or things like textbooks or computers.
Being in India, the divide between the rich and the poor is even sharper, and the exploitation of the less fortunate leaves little room for them to seek education or even learn English. I remember seeing a boy the same age as me working as a live in servant at an aunt’s house and being told he was “very lucky” to have such an opportunity. What they neglected to address was the circumstances that left him needing such a job and the fact that his likelihood of him getting a better job would plummet as he could not attend school anymore, and likely never did.
In India, mass poverty is unavoidable– it’s present on the streets, in restaurants, in town. However, in Newbury Park, homelessness is often something many of us only really see when you drive a few hours away or on the television. Inevitably, poverty can become something fictional or faraway. But in dissociating the poor from other “real” humans, empathy is lost. You can’t feel bad for something that doesn’t really exist in your head, and so change can’t progress either without people behind the issue. Even if poverty doesn’t directly affect some of us, I think being a good human means wanting the best for others, especially those who don’t deserve the suffering inflicted on them.
In order to truly empathize with world issues, you have to see them for yourself. You have to seek uncomfortability to grow and expand your perspective by going beyond the screen of your phone. You have to breathe in polluted air and see the faces of the people we profit from to understand the horror of such things and truly want to help fix these issues— whether that be through advocacy, donating, or hands-on volunteering. True empathy does not just go to the extent of liking a TikTok or sharing an Instagram post, it is feeling an ounce of the sickness and sadness that the people who suffer feel everyday. I know now that a true understanding can’t be achieved by skipping between videos of influencer advertisements and the homelessness crisis. You must open your eyes and look at others in theirs and confront the privilege we have, instead of scrolling away and turning our heads.
