Mangoes

I had a craving for mangoes. I went to the store and bought two, one for today, one for tomorrow. I took out a knife and sliced into the first.

And suddenly, I was on the beach in Goa, sitting beside my friend Claire on the beautiful turquoise tapestry I had just bought (after haggling it down to half price), watching the fruit man slice the entire mango with a huge knife in four chops. Twice a day he’d walk by our hut, the sound of his voice wafting on the soft Indian breeze, “Pineapple, coconut, mango, banana!” I adored it. His yells became the soundtrack of our time there.

I stood at my kitchen counter this morning, thinking of him. I smiled, and then, for the first time since I’ve been home, was overcome with the desperation of the world’s injustice. How utterly blessed I am. Of course I felt that in India, but at the same time, I didn’t. I didn’t really think about people like him who spent their days walking on a gorgeous beach in India selling fruit. Surely there were worse ways to live. I had been living among so many less fortunate than him.

But as I stood in my kitchen this morning, I thought about where he is now. The tourist season is over. The monsoons have arrived. He’s no longer walking on the beach, chanting off a list of fruits, the only English he knows. He’s most likely left the south, returned to the desert where his family waits all season for him. He’s taken his meager earnings from the fruit he sold and buys what he can for them – food, water, little else.

And here I am, in my very own kitchen, in a thriving city, cutting mangoes that were as easy to obtain as one could imagine. And I cried into the depths of the ripe, yellow fruit. And I thought, how unfair that I should stand here longing in every moment to be there. How unfair that I should look upon their poverty as a paradise. How unfair that I am here simply because I was born to the right people, in the right place, at the right time.

Because no matter what anyone tries to argue about the self-inducement of poverty and inequality, the truth is, it generally just comes down to pure luck. I am so lucky. Why should I be? This question has been running through my mind since I arrived in India over three months ago, and probably long before that. Why me? Why us?

I wonder who I would be if I had been born impoverished. I wonder if I would know of the other realities that could have existed for me had things been different. I wonder if I would sit and wonder in the same way.

Sometimes I’d just sit and watch people in the streets, trying to guess what they were thinking, questioning whether they dreamed of things the same way I do. Did they want to escape their lives? Or is dreaming of escape a luxury only people who are well off can afford?

I think about how painful that is for me, to long for a life I’m not living, but I have the possibility of living it someday. I have the potential to live the life I want. I have the freedom to dream. Why me? I’ve worked so little in life. I’ve faced such minor adversity, no matter how relative we all claim it to be. I’ve taken so very much for granted.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair that I have this and they have nothing. It’s not fair that they are potentially content with their lives and I complain about everything. It’s not fair that I can’t save the world, despite every effort I may make. I’m only human. But we’re all only human, and doesn’t that make us family? Doesn’t that mean we should do everything in our power to help and protect one another? Doesn’t that mean we’re all one?

But we’re not, because we live in this world that divides us. Because we live in a world more concerned with money and color and arbitrary categorization than humanity itself. Because the fruit man is in the desert with more mouths to feed, more bodies to clothe, more cries to ease, than he is capable of. And because I am here, in my kitchen, in a cutely assembled outfit paired with new shoes, eating a tear soaked mango.