Human Roadblock.

Like everything else that day, the going home was slow. Darkness descended on us after a few hours, lending an eerie blanket to the subdued conversations.

Suddenly, Aaron shouted out, “what was that??” and drew everyone’s attention. Apparently the bus had just passed something on the side of the road that looked like a living heap. Aaron and whoever else saw it with him forced the bus driver to stop, and the small number of guys got off the bus to check things out. Not comfortable with just sitting there, several of us ladies also got off to check out the action.

What we found was a poor man passed on the side of the road. It took some time for people to figure out if he was dead, or just dead drunk. Luckily, it was the latter.

The Indians, like our bus driver and his companion, thought we were crazy for making them stop in the first place and wanted to continue our ride home. However, this man really was passed out in the road, and there were no street lights anywhere nearby. While the headlights from our bus had been enough to avoid hitting him, we couldn’t in good conscience just leave him there for the next car with worse lights to come by.

So we force the bus driver to help us move the drunk man. Arguments then arose about how far off the road we should move him, as the Indians assured us there were snakes in the bush that crept almost entirely up to the road. Death by snakebite or by vehicle?

It was decided to move him mostly off the road, and then we took his things from his bag and make a barricade around him. Satisfied that we had just saved this man’s life, we returned to the bus, triumphant.

As we waited for everyone to re-board, I started to hear something coming from outside. Our drunken man had awoken enough to start singing! I didn’t know whether to laugh or sigh.

In telling my coworker, Chachadi, about this incident the next day, he advised me that we would’ve been better off leaving the man as he was. Drinking is not a part of Indian culture, and those who overindulge like that are seriously frowned upon by the majority. As far as Chachadi (one of the nicest, most genuine and trustworthy people I know here) was concerned, we enabled that man to continue mooching off others—a societal parasite. I guess, also, India just has such a big population that losing the occasional drunk here and there is not of much concern in general. (Honestly, though, you’d probably have similar reactions in the US, though maybe people might be more guarded about whom they profess those thoughts to…) People seem more used to death, too, for the simple reason that, by and large, the average Indian life is harder and shorter than ours in the US and similarly-developed countries. So all the Indians thought it was silly of us Americans to go out of our way for some dreg of society.

I’m not suggesting that we were wrong in our action, and I’m still glad we acted that way, but it does sort of make you wonder about the practice of “development” and well-intentioned people like us coming in and taking a self-righteous stand on issues not thought important by the locals. Of course, unless people on both sides can broaden their world view and approach things from a different angle, nothing will ever change—in a positive or negative direction. It’s just that maintaining that balance requires you already having that wider, beyond-your-specifically-socialized perspective, meaning you have a steeper learning curve while still only so much time.