Stink

 In one of the poorest countries of the world it wraps you within and never leaves you alone. It's right in your face as soon as you leave the safe haven of an AC'd office. It grabs you by the hand if you close your eyes from it, it talks to you in a language you don't  understand but still there is no way you could not get a gist of it.  

It'is on your skin as permanently as the dirt on the faces of the litter of children, hurdled around the countless mothers sitting by the roadside in their hopeless hope to sell a few leaves of spinach, a pair of used shoe laces, a worn-out watch strap for a few rupees to make an evening meal. It's unwashable. It's stinks worse than the holy Bagmati river.

The day on the return from New York it touched me, after ten days of non-exposure. Ten days upon return it still stank but the resistance had been developed. I could smell it, but like with any bad smell, one slowly gets used to.

Back in the safe haven of the air-conditioned office I was struggling through another pile of freshly produced, shiny-covered reports dealing with the complex causes and outcomes of it, turning the numbers into human-interest facts about dying children, hungry mothers, and stories on lost lives with faces, so shocking that I even managed to shock myself in between cups of Nescafe, certain to change some cash-flows.

Poverty. Stinks.

Then I stumbled on photos, also designed to change the cause of some cash flows, but not to make the poor a little less poor, but to make the rich a little richer. I am deeply ashamed to confess, that from time to time I have to pinch myself hard to feel it through my resistant skin, but at least I am here and in the job still because I smell the stench and feel the pinch. Because I find it deceptive, but still not fashionable nor sexy.

A $200 umbrella modelled by an Indian man, in Vogue India.

Two-thirds of Indians live on less than $2 per day.

A child models a designer-bib that costs $100, in Vogue India.

Would you buy it knowing the same amount would buy a year of schooling for perhaps that particular girl, immunise her against deadly diseases or provide her nutritious meals for several months?

(Added Sep 2010)

A Nepali model modelling for a designer dress in Nepal.

With admiring street children in the background.