giving back
Make-A-Wish Mumbai, India
Today my life has been changed for a lifetime. I do not really know if it is for the good or for the bad yet, but life certainly is different. For the past three days I have been working with Make-A-Wish Bombay. These tireless workers spend long days doing whatever they can to grant the wish of sick children. I feel honored to work along side these amazing men and women in an attempt to document their remarkable deeds. Working with the Bombay chapter has been a real eye opener. We have been documenting children with all kinds of ailments including aids, cancer, and tumors in Bombay’s Government Hospitals. These hospitals are free for the most poor and most needy people of India. I am really having a lot of mixed emotions about the whole experience, on one hand we really did do some good, I was able to document some astoundingly happy children that really have nothing more than what we brought them. Just the look on their faces was enough to bring tears to my eyes. On more than one occasion I had to do everything I could to hold back the tears and keep shooting. But on the other hand I was appalled by the amount of filth and morose conditions that these hospitals had. I witnessed some unbelievable events and feel ashamed in repeating them because their was nothing I could do.
Upon entering the hospitals I was immediately greeted by security, I got the feeling that photographers generally are not welcome and the job of security was more to keep people like me (photographers) out rather than to keep the peace. Government hospitals in India have quite a reputation.
We made our way down a dark hallway. The smell was my first sense that things were not quite right. The odor of urine in a hot confined space is unmistakable. My eyes adjusted to the darkness while my nose adjusted to the foul stench and soon I realized that this was not going to be what I expected. The dirt on the floor was so thick you could make out where the traffic of peoples bare feet have been trekking through litter and debris mixed in with filth, this path guided our journey deeper inside. We approached our first corner and thick red spit called pan painted the walls. It would be America’s version of chewing tobacco, but in a red form. I was confused, this couldn’t possibly be.
Upon reaching the pediatric ward I was feeling a bit uneasy of what may lay ahead. But after entering the ward we were greeted one by one with smile after smile. Even through all of the pain these children endured, the small token of a simple gift made their days. Their smiles were genuine, honest and without greed or strings attached….pure to the core.
One child was lying alone, in the corner next to a window with oxygen flowing through a make shift housing. It was an old plastic round ice cream container with a neck hole cut out and a tube with oxygen attached at the top. My heart broke. He couldn’t have been for than three years old. His small chest rose and fell rapidly in the heat. It was very clear he was dying. I think what disturbed me the most was that he was alone and no one was with him. While this child lay unconscious we made the wishes of two other children that were positive for HIV in the bed next to him.
I found myself torn, on one hand I was there to make Make-A-Wish look good with happy children but on the other hand I was feeling like I must document what I was seeing to share with the world in the name of change. For the most part my images are of happy children sprinkled with a bit of truth. The images I have chosen to post here are the truth as I saw it. Very different than the happy images I delivered to make a wish.
In so many ways this is the embodiment of India, the good and the bad, the rich and the poor, the evil and the sublime all rolled up into one big ball of wax. Even while I was appalled by the conditions in the hospital I realize that without this institution, these souls would have nowhere to go and surely would stand no chance of survival. It seems that the world is not always black and white but rather a constant changing of grays.
