Shitstorm

As the birthplace of Lord Krishna, somewhat akin to Jesus, Vrindaban is one of the most spiritual and holy cities in India. At the moment, it's also one of the shittiest, in the literal sense of the term.

Its population has exploded in the last twenty years, and is now well beyond its capacity for employment; beggars are common at all hours. An economy-halted construction boom has brought a strange kind of sprawl to the city, which once was centered around their 5,000 temples—if you count the smallest shrines along with the largest compounds. For many of the buildings on the outskirts, it's impossible to tell if they're coming or going; bare rebar reaches into the air like wiry hair on roadkill.

In the city center, what once were gardens or simple open spaces, are now holes and foundations and other half-built, half-hearted attempts at construction. Old men pick at the rubble with strange axes, one man moving dirt with an oddly designed hand shovel while another man smoothes it back down. They move with the enthusiasm of unskilled Communist workers who know they'll be issued the same substandard pay whether they accomplish anything or not, so long as they simply stay in motion.

The town has expanded into the farm fields and overtaken the forests; the very forest where Lord Krishna played as a child has been leveled, scraped, developed, and much of it is now used as the parched-earth fairgrounds for Kumba Mela, the once-every-twelve-year festival celebrating monks, brotherhood, and everything Krishna.

The population and building booms brought a tidal wave of shit through the town's open sewers, which run at the base of the walls around every building. A foot or so deep, a foot or so wide, their water is murky grey with the expected debris and smells to high heaven. After rain, they flood and wash over the streets, lending a certain aromatic quality to the mud that is lacking in even the foulest prisons.

Dr. Gupta apologizes for the putrid air, which outside our compound walls is a choking mix of exhaust from too many diesel and two-stroke engines, too much smoke from the sacred incense at the thousands of temples, and the farm-smell from hundreds of cows roaming freely and pooping on everything. He apologizes that with the crush of people and the overburdened job market, prices are rising and honesty is not what it once was. Mainly, he apologizes for the open sewers flowing over the filthy dirt roads and pooling in fetid potholes.

"The town just put in a brand new sewage system," he says. “A modern one. They ripped up all the streets to lay the pipes. Then they ran out of money, and have mostly abandoned the project, so the streets are completely ruined and the old sewers are still backing up and now there is dirt that turns to terrible mud where last year there were paving stones. I would not wish to show this Vrindaban to Westerners…but you're here already.”

I've dealt with open sewers before—par for the course in much of Asia—but never ones that overflow the streets so wantonly. The people seem accustomed to it, knowing just where to walk to both avoid the oncoming rickshaws and the puddles. They leap over the potholes, walk around the mud, or otherwise avoid the problem they can’t help but worsen every morning after breakfast. One lone crew is at work on the main road through town, though instead of fixing the thoroughfare, they’re digging a hole to access their disconnected pipes.

Dr. Gupta expects this to surprise and confuse me; it saddens and repulses me, but I deal with it as anyone does who must carry on regardless. He also expects the poverty—by Western standards, though frequently by Indian standards also—to be a crushing blow to my soul. It is not; I try not to impose foreign standards on a foreign place, as that hasn’t worked out too well for America in the last twenty years.

Of course there is more that tones down the heartbreak on images that, if starring our countrymen, would shock America. As he explains, there is much more to life than worldly goods and needs, and even the lowest Indian beggar may find, especially in this spiritual place, the sort of peace and divine comfort that eludes the richest of godless men.

"India could do very well with one hundred million people," he says. "But we have nearly a billion. There are not resources for them all to have laptops, all to have cellphones. They cannot, unfortunately, all even have proper shelter. This is a problem of sheer number, so those things cannot be used to judge the progress of a life. The spirit feels none of the body's pain, and the spirit is eternal and cannot be harmed by those things that harm the body. These are consolations."

Journalism I report on sports, travel, and local news. I'll cover anything, anytime, anywhere. Let me know how I can serve your publication.

Photography My fine art photography is on permenant display at Cuban Pete's in Montclair, NJ, and is represented in numerous private collections. I do commercial, documentary, fine art, and other photography by commission.

Creative Writing I write commissioned biographies and other works of any length (from short narratives to full length books), and have several book-length manuscripts currently under consideration.