I wanted India to be suffering. I wanted people dying on the streets, without food, gross tumors distorting their bodies or disease spreading while a $2-cure waits just out of feasibility. I wanted to see that, photograph it, and return from here changed.
Instead, I find people partying on the beaches, spending more on hotels than I’m willing to spend, laughing with the friends that I don’t have here.
I knew I wouldn’t find what I was looking for in this place. I knew this place, Goa, would be too rich and touristy to meet the desires of my imagination. I knew also that, even though what I wanted wasn’t right, it does exist, just not in the parts where I’m willing to go on my own.
I’m sure I’ll see some of it. The largest slum in Asia sits inside Mumbai, not way out in some impoverished remoteness.
But what I want is wrong. It’s wrong on so many levels. I can’t seek it out, not while I’m thinking like this. Who I am has to change before I’m allowed to see that.
