rorz

Not long ago I saw ten of my friends off to India, the next couple of days I couldn’t escape my own encounter 2 years before with the country that is so much. Western food became bland again, I started burning sandalwood in my room, I longed to walk the streets of the City of Joy once more and haggle with the sly-dog street salesmen.

But most of all I longed to play once more with the children in the Mother Theresa’s orphanage in Howrah. I’m not a religious man, and I’ve never been one to be on any crusade, but when these kids with such beautiful smiles lined up to use my legs as a slide my heart exploded. And when one of them smiled at me through tears as we left that day, she wouldn’t have realised she’d changed my life. Every kid I saw on the street for the rest of the trip, every kid I’ve seen on T.V with flies on their face since I got home, every kid I’ve entertained with jokes and games on camps, every man and woman I’ve read about struggling against the odds of survival, they’ve all hit me like a bullet with the spirit of that child who I will never meet again.

It’s not like it was just this poignant poetic moment when she smiled, with rays of light or music blasting, it wasn’t even that single moment that has driven me to do all I can with my life to see to it that everyone has a chance at a life of freedom, joy, and HEALTH. It was all the stuff before she smiled and all the stuff after that was just as important in shaping how I see my place in this crazy enchanting world, but it’s her smile which I go back to when I get confused about what I’m doing with my life.

Everyday has something in it to change your life for the better, you just have to be open to it, my experience in Kolkata helped to bash away the ambiguity of this life so that i could be open to be changed everyday by life. So go there to search and be open, you probably won’t find what you are looking for (hopefully you’ll find a hotel though), and it might take a while after you get home to realise Kolkata has changed your life.