I wake up to check my email and before the computer starts up I hear a sizzle. Quickly I remove the battery and make sure the laptop isn’t plugged in. It is no use, the machine won’t turn on… with a butter knife I strip out the hard drive and put it in the netbook – it at least starts spinning so I know it’s the machine. After a bit of investigation I figure out the fan has blown, the computer is trash to me now.
Craig wakes up and sees what I was doing and I quickly inform him that we are on another journey. How in the world are we going to get another machine way out here when it’s World War III outside the door? But we decide there isn’t anything else we can do but try.
We call for a taxi service at the front desk knowing we are going to get robbed on the fare. We venture outside the gates and tell the driver we want to go to the mall, holding up the newspaper clipping with the only laptop store mentioned in all of Dew Delhi. On we drive to several sites before he realizes what “mall” we are talking about. No, not the building in downtown hell called “the mall” – it is the actual posh mall 45 minutes away.
When we arrive it is like we are actually back in a western atmosphere except for the guys with the guns and scanning machine at the entrance. Craig feels a little better but I never expect much and just want to regain the only income I have available to get out of the country. Without my computer I cannot work and without working I am for sure stuck in India. Luckily, we have found a store and paying prices of the USA is no objection. Craig whips out his credit card. He has saved me once again and I know I owe this man more than my life. I am determined at some point in the future to pay him back for all his kindness for he has not the understanding of what it means for me to find such a novel person by my side.
I have done and lived to give kindness and help to everyone but it seems throughout this journey no one gives me a break. After several hours of working on bringing my laptop to some standard as to get back online just in time for work, I realize the situation ahead of me that day. Not even today will anyone give me a break and work brings me to tears. I did not cry because of work alone and I shall say I had never intended to explain on Void that I have ever cried at all. But what I have been through in the nearly 8 months and the series of events in the past few days, only to be overlooked at work was just too much.
How cruel of a world we live in? To go out on the streets on India should bring anyone to tears. Everyone tries to rip you off because the country has been brought to act like animals. There is nothing easier said about it. At home people have jobs and houses or apartments, have food and clean water accessible, shop or have the ability for clean clothes, some paying insane amounts for them. For what exactly can anyone be depressed about?
The slums of America can not compare to a stretch of block in India. It is as if bombs have went off, walls crumble and people are stretched out upon them, sleeping or dead, thousands of homeless children just begging to cars passing for they haven’t eaten in days, people hardly clothed and making shelters – shantytowns of the clothes they do have just to escape the heat. What possessions they have they can carry in their pockets. I grasp the necklace my dear best friend had given me before I left because although it is hardly anything to anyone in America, it is another few days of life to those out here.
You may see the pictures coming in the next few days, you may have already seen pictures in books and on TV, but you cannot understand the totality of it. You go home to a comfortable, clean setting and turn on your electronics and never save the pictures in your head of what exists out in the world. You will never understand what living is like and you will pity yourself for absolutely no reason. I can only feel sorry for you, because you are as those I have seen, animals in their own right. You are an animal of your own world and still you feel like you deserve more when you have no idea why. Not a million excuses could warrant your self pity.
Do you have a job and a home to which you are safe and secure? You may even have a car or take a bus or train that you can ride in whenever you like. Do you have access to fresh water and food and even clothing? How many of you have a closet of clothes at home only to desire more? How much do your shoes cost you? When you see a homeless man on the street do you shake hands with them or simply throw them money without looking in their eyes? Can you call someone if you need help and have them give you anything you need? Can you call 20 of these someone’s? If you have said yes to any ONE of these questions, then you have nothing to be upset about in your life. You do not know depression other than your own self pity, your own ego. When you have lived without all that, for short or an extended period of time, you can only then realize how a good portion of the world currently lives.
Get out of your ivory towers and start helping, stop hurting or wanting of yourself. Start to be humble and stop thinking that everyone else has what you do. Not one person can save the world with this attitude but millions can. If anyone takes anything away from Void, which Void has set out to do, take this away with you. Remember just how lucky you are to be able to walk into a store and afford those shirts, afford that 20th purse or that 50th pair of shoes. Remember how lucky you are to be able to walk to the corner and pick up a bottle of water or a simple apple, that may not look like much to you, but millions are in great need of.
Remembering alone cannot save the mass from such human horrors but as you remember, so will you change. A great mind recently begged of me to start a project, to start a 30 day repetition of learning something new, to work on each day as to ingrain it into my being. What this person does not know is that I have already been on that 30 day journey for months on Void and years to develop for the world. That project is to bring forth the tools needed to make a great change in the world. If it is working, it is hard to tell. But anyone watching and reading must be sure to know that anything is possible. Anything can be done if you could just pick yourself up and do it. Why can’t we all strive to make a great change in the world, to be good and kind without expecting anything in return, not even to expect the satisfaction of doing it?
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