Indomitable Spirit

I read a piece on the garbage collectors in New Delhi today. It's amazing, how a woman who daily hand picks trash in her allocated community performs one of the most important civic services, and expects to earn Rs. 3,500 a month in donations, yet gets only Rs 1,500. Few jobs can be as demeaning and exploitative as hers. But she doesn't have the time or the luxury to entertain such thoughts. She has mouths to feed. She looks for optimal ways to use her scavenge, including trading waste food for milk to grow her 4 children at home. I've regularly seen trash pickers all around, somehow, I won't ever be able to recognize any, they all go unnoticed to me.

Mr. Handa recollected his experiences during the Bhuj earthquake that rocked West India many years ago. While his residence went unscathed, an apartment complex near-by was razed to the ground. In the debris was a young girl stuck under some cement slabs and her right arm crushed between cement and steel. The army dug a tunnel to reach her, a doctor went in and amputated her useless limb, and 30 hours after the ordeal began she was freed. She came out without her parents, sister and an arm. Today she's a serious painter/artist and is attending 1st year in medical college.

In the beginning of every Tae-Kwon-Do class I attended, we had to chant the tenets of the martial art. It ended with "...indomitable spirit, Sir!". Those words didn't quite make sense then. They make better sense now. Able bodied people who haven't worked in tough conditions for little money and many insults don't quite understand "indomitable spirit". They cry over missed internship/job or girlfriend/marriage opportunities. It seems our worries enlarge to fill up our entire existence.