Steph, me, Rael, and Gabby in our saris!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThis was the first time I saw a starving child in India.\u00a0 I was aware of the poverty that consumed a large part of the Indian population, but true awareness can only be gained through personal experience.\u00a0 No longer was I thousands of miles removed, clicking through google images on my laptop.\u00a0 I was now inches away from a bony hand at the end of a bony arm that desperately reached towards our rickshaw as we drove by.\u00a0 When I looked down, I saw that the boy was not alone.\u00a0 Just behind him was an even smaller child holding onto his older brother\u2019s emaciated leg.\u00a0 I had no cash, no food, just a pack of gum and some lipgloss.\u00a0 It was a very helpless feeling, knowing that even if I had money or food to give these children, it wouldn\u2019t be enough for the next day or for the next child who couldn\u2019t afford to eat.\u00a0 $200 suddenly felt like too much money to spend on a sari.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It was time for dinner when we made it back to the hotel.\u00a0 We found a small vegetarian restaurant near the Best Western and sat for a quick meal.\u00a0 Gabby, Ezra, and Rael ordered the restaurant’s special, a vegetarian rice dish topped with a spiced chickpea gravy.\u00a0 I had only been in India for a few days, but I was becoming exhausted by spices.\u00a0 I wanted something that felt familiar, so I ordered the veggie burger.\u00a0 I assumed that a culture that didn\u2019t eat cow would have a good solution to the veggie patty, and I definitely considered it something worth trying.\u00a0 It turns out that Best Westerns aren\u2019t the only American tradition Indians are unfamiliar with.\u00a0 Indians are also misinformed as to what constitutes a burger.\u00a0 While my friends enjoyed a delicious meal of chickpeas, I was presented with a bun, lettuce, tomato, and a chunky version of American ketchup.\u00a0 In India, a vegetarian burger is another way of saying \u201cno burger.\u201d\u00a0 I felt silly sending it back since it was stupid for me to order a burger in the first place.\u00a0 I heard my mother’s voice encouraging me to eat the unappealing dish, drawing on the phantom starving children of this world to guilt me into submission.\u00a0 Normally, such tactics are of little use on me, but on this particular night, the starving children didn\u2019t seem as phantom as they had before.\u00a0 I ate the entire \u201cburger\u201d and was grateful for the bun, lettuce, and tomato…even if it wasn\u2019t what I had expected.\u00a0 The chunky ketchup added substance to the sandwich, and it ended up being a very filling dinner.<\/p>\n
To be Continued…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lucknow is the city where Gaurav grew up, and it is where most of his family still lives.\u00a0 It is approximately one hour south of New Delhi by plane, and six hours by car.\u00a0 The first, of many times, that I regretted over-packing for India was when I spotted the miniature jet that would take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":308,"featured_media":7161,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[16568,16579,16576,16569,5853,16575,5162,3776,5849,16578,16572,16567,16570,16131,16571,16574,10598,16577,7865],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Image-seven-Steph-me-Rael-and-Gabby-in-our-saris-297x300-2.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5094"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/308"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5094"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6576,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5094\/revisions\/6576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5094"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}