Leaving India: Bittersweet

We got a great night's sleep and had an excellent buffet breakfast at the ITC to brace us for the 200 km ride back to Delhi. The ride was as eventful as all rides in India including a major traffic jam. Everyone kept going further and further off the road to try to get around the jam and this in and of itself created a jam on top of a jam so to speak.
      In the midst of the jam, Vinod stopped at his favorite sweets store to buy some special Agra candy for his wife and children. He explained to us that his birthday was the day before and his anniversary was the day after. Vinod had been away from his wife and children while shuttling us around Agra.
    As we waited for Vinod on the side of the road, a mostly toothless fellow showed ip seemingly out of nowhere to try to sell us carved elephants and funny little wire doodads. We couldn't help but to laugh hysterically that this guy was on standby in an area where there would be no foreigners to come out and start soliciting. We decided to give him 10 rupees to just go away. He took the money but kept trying to sell the items. We finally gave in and bought the wire things for next to nothing. 
    After the jam cleared and further down the road, we stopped for a rest stop. It was at a hotel that was not doing much business. There was a gift shop out front that was out of business. After using the rest rooms we came out to the van and there was now a guy with a stand selling various souvenirs. We waved him off successfully but he than approached me and asked where I was from. I told him America and he pulled out a $5 bill and said he needed rupees. I then gave him 200 rupees and he gave me the five and we hit the road and noticed a camel sitting next to a field as we pulled out.
     The ride to the Radisson Airport Hotel was further uneventful but a bittersweet melancholy set in as it resonated that this would the last time for a while that we would see the fascination of the Indian street scene. 
     We came to a very busy intersection, one of few in  India that has a traffic signal. Cars and vehicles of all manner were stacked five and six wide waiting for the light to change. Suddenly, a girl of about 12 appeared st the window asking for money. We couldn't help but to roll down the window and give her just 10 rupees. She jumped for joy as she bounded through the heavy traffic that was now starting to move. We then saw her looking around somewhat concerned and we then saw a smaller girl blocked from her view within the surging traffic. This was a girl of about eight.
     Troy continued to look back as we pulled away and said that the older girl had found the younger one and upon finding her had given her a hard smack.
      Traffic was heavy all the way to the Radisson as Vinod pointed out to us the neighborhoods where rent is upwards of $10,000 per month juxtaposed next to teeming slums of people living in tents whose roofs appear to be nothing more than discarded clothing patched together.
     In Agra, we had seen two guys wading chest deep in a heavily flowing creek that appeared to contain nothing more than sewage and water run off. Vinod told us they are sweepers, people of the lowest caste who are obliged to do the crappiest work that no human bring should be subjected to. Vinod informed us that they were likely simply cleaning out the creek.
     As we pulled into the gates of the Radisson for our car to be searched for bombs, we realized that we were leaving behind a land of immense beauty and contradiction, of supreme wealth and unimaginable poverty and of a great history with a huge potential . Your heart can break for India when it sets in that its weaknesses are its strengths and vice a versa and that as the country becomes more westernized, life will improve for many and and get worse for many others. Ultimately though, modernization will likely take the soul of this country, a soul that seems as old as human life itself and which is expressed in the joy and spirit and beauty of the people.