India From a Tour Bus Window

Today we spent some time touring Hyderabad as a kind of decompression from our intense time of ministry. And while it was nice to be moving slower and not have the pressure of ministry, I found that I like India a lot better when I'm shaking hands with kids in the slums that sitting behind a tour bus window. Last night after we flew in, the bus that picked us up was stopped at a light for a moment and some kids on the street who were begging noticed a bus of white people. They were standing by the bus reaching up their hands to us. But our windows wouldn't open and we couldn't have given them anything if they did.

In all honesty, I didn't feel like I was in India anymore. I feel like I'm in a documentary. I was struck by how a few hours earlier I was shaking hands with kids just like these. I was being invited into their homes in the slums. We were treating them for scabies and worms. And we were talking with them, learning their names, taking pictures with them, and laughing with them. And yet now I was sitting up in a tour bus looking through a thick window. The tragedy for me was that a few hours earlier, these kids had been people to me. I was relating to them. I was engaged. But now that was over. My new context didn't allow us to have a relationship. I was just a white guy on a tour bus and they were just poor Indian kids on the street. I wished I was back in the slum.

I like India better from the depths of the slum than the tour bus window.