As I was strolling down Yeoor Hills, with the endorphins from my run masking the nagging pain in my chest, I passed a man struggling pull his handcart up the hill. Picture a two-foot-wide wooden seesaw and replace its fulcrum with a pair of wheels and you have a handcart. Goods to be transported have to be strapped to its surface. The puller has a strap going around his shoulders that is fastened to the cart, which makes it seem as though he is standing in for an animal.
There are some professions that should have been long extinct in India. Sewage cleaner is at the top of the list but handcart puller shouldn't be far behind. The sight of a man huffing and sweating as he pulls a cart through the heat and smoke of Mumbai is heart-rending.
I know this post reads as though it has been written by a foreigner shocked by the scale of poverty and destitution before him in India. But, the truth is after you spend some time abroad, you see your country with new eyes. Sights and events that you previously wouldn't have given a second thought to, become jarring. Which is why I would never talk about this to anyone living in India. It is all very well for me to find faults in India from the distance and comfort of my university life in England.
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