Street kids at the Salaam Baalak Trust shelter, and getting lost en route

After nursing a summer cold for a couple of days I was glad to be on my feet and able to explore Delhi again this weekend.  Temperatures soared on Thursday, so naturally everyone cranked up their air conditioning and the power went out four times.  Let me tell you, it isn’t fun trying to sleep in our stuffy dorm when the ceiling fans don’t work – especially when you already feel like crap.  I don’t think I’ve ever sweated so much. 

I took a walking tour organized by the Salaam Baalak Trust, an organization launched in the aftermath of the movie Salaam Bombay, which was about the hard life of runaway street kids in Bombay.  Don’t remember it?  Here’s a couple of links if you want more info or video clips. 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaam_Bombay!#section_1
YouTube
YouTube

The tour was led by these two ex-street kids, Iqbal (left) and Shivram (right), and they told their own stories as they led us first to a drop-in centre in front of the central railway station, then down the tiny side streets of the Paharganj area and, finally, to this boys shelter where there was a class of kids who were all too happy to ham it up for the camera and to get some attention.  Before I entered the room and all hell broke loose, they’d been sitting cross-legged on the floor in neat rows from front to back of the room – as though they should have been sitting at desks, but of course, didn’t have that kind of luxury.  It was pretty disturbing seeing how young some of the run-aways were. 

Though I thought I’d left enough time to get to the tour, I ended up 30 minutes.  Lessons learned: everything in this city is further apart than you expect and don’t trust the directions you are given on the street no matter how many people tell you the exact same thing.  I hate to say it, but I was directed so far in the wrong direction so many times that it made me wonder if it was all a plot to support the cycle- and auto-rickshaw drivers who are always available to get you back to where you need to go - even if they don’t actually know where that is.  It is enough to negotiate a fare and get you in the cab and take it from there, which is not something I feel very comfortable with.  So I refused to go along, not out of sheer stubbornness, but because it was clear they really didn’t understand what my destination was and that it really didn’t matter.  Anyway, thank goodness for Google maps and the GPS function on my phone.  I can’t tell you how useful they are.  For one, they are super accurate.  Two, they make the best map of Delhi I’ve found.  And, best of all, my phone is so discreet.  If I stood at a corner and unfolded a big paper map I’d be instantly swarmed with so many men trying to take me somewhere that I wouldn’t be able think.  But I can pull out my phone and be pretty inconspicuous (other than the fact that I’m an unaccompanied women and the only white person in sight). 

After the tour, I had a liquid lunch in a rooftop restaurant and took this photo from there.  When I say liquid lunch, I mean a litre of water, a bottle of limca (lime soda) and yoghurt in an effort to rehydrate. Then I explored a while longer, till I was completely exhausted and rode the metro home in glorious air-conditioning.

I like the shot above because the undershirts were exactly the same shade of blue as the building.

The wind really picked up in the evening like there was a storm coming in, but nothing really developed other than a few rain drops – not enough to dampen all the dust anyway.  In fact the wind just whipped it up even more and gave the city the same pungent smell of dust and burnt wood that I remember from the night I arrived.  Until last night I wasn’t sure if I’d just got used to the smell or whether it had actually gone away.  Now I know.  It gets blown in on the wind.  

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