The Slum of the Lepers

I'm reading a book right now, Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, and two of the characters are visiting the slum of the lepers in Bombay... This little blurb has truly inspired me. You will see why this has inspired me to go photograph it.

"'Hey! This isn' the way back to the slum. Where are we going now?'
'We are going to visit the place where you will be getting your medicines.'
'My what?'
'Khaderbhai has arranged for you to get medicines, every week. The thing I brought you today--those are the first. We are going to the medicine black market.'
'A black market for medicine? Where is it?'
'In the slum of the leprs,' Abdullah answered, matter-of-factly. Then he laughed again as he pushed the bike to greater speed through a gap in the traffic that opened for him, even as he reached it. 'Just leave it to me, Lin brother. Now you are part of the plan, isn't it so?'
Those words--now you are part of the plan--should've woken some fear in me. I should've sensed. . . something . . . even then, right at the start. But I wasn't afraid. I was almost happy. The words seemed exciting. They rushed my blood. When my fugitive life began, I was exiled from my family, homeland, and culture. I thgouth that was the whole of it. Years into my banishment, I realised that I was exiled to something, as well. What I escaped to was the lonely, reckless freedom of the outcast. Like outcasts everywhere, I courted danger because danger was one of the few things strong enough to help me forget what I'd lost. And staring into the warmth of the afternoon wind, riding with Abdullah into the web of streets, I fell as fearlessly into my fate, that afternoon, as a man falls into love with a shy woman's best smile.
The journey to the lepers' camp took us to the outskirts of the city. There were several treatment colonies for Bombay's lepers, but the men and women we went to see refused to live in them. Funded by state and private contributions, the colonies provided medical attention, caring suport, and the clean environments. The rules and regulations that governed them were strict, however, and not all the lepers could bring themselves to conform. As a result, some chose to leave, and some were forced out. At any one time, a few dozen men, women, and children lived outside the colonies, in the wider community of the city.
The elastic tolerance of sum-dwellers--who accommodated every caste and race and condition of person within their sprawl of huts--rarely extended to lepers. Local councils and street communities didn't endure their presence for long. Feared and shunned, the lepers formed themselves into mobile slums that settled, within an hour, in any open space they could find and made a traceless departure in even less time. Sometimes they established themselves for several weeks beside a rubbish dump, fending off the permanent rag-pickers, who resisted their incursion. At other times they set up their camp on a swampy patch of vacant land or some outfall for industrial waste. When I first isited them with Abdullah, that day, I found that they'd built their ragged shelters on the rusty stones of a railway siding near the suburb of Khar.
We were forced to park Abdullah's bike, and enter the railway land as the lepers did, through gaps in fences and across ditches. The rusty plateau was a staging area for most trains on the urban route and many of the goods wagons carrying produce and manuactured articles out of the city. Beyond the sub-station itself were office outbuildings, storage warehouses, and maintenance sheds, Further on was a vast shunting area--an open space marked by dozens of railway lines and their confluences. At the outer edges, high wire fences enclosed the space.
Outside was the commerce and cosiness of suburban Khar: traffic and gardens, balconies and bazaars. Within was a aridity of function and systems. There were no plants, no animals, and no people. Even the rolling stock were ghost trains, trundling from shunting stop to shunting stop without staff or passengers. Then there was the lepers' slum.
They'd seized a diamond of clear space between the tracks for themselves, and patched their shelters together in it. None of the huts was taller than my chest. From a distance, they looked like the pup tents of an army bivouac wreathed in the smoke of cooking fires. As we neared them, however, we saw that their appalling raggedness made the slum huts where I lved seem like solid, comfortable structures. They were made from scraps of cardboard and plastic help aloft with crooked branches, and braced with thin string. I could've knocked the whole camp to rubble with an open hand., and it would've taken me less than a minute, yet thirty men, women, and children made their lives there.
We entered the slum unchallenged, and made our way to one of the huts near the center. People stopped and stared at us, but no-one spoke. It was hard not to look at them, and then hard not to stare when I did look. Some of the people no noses, mst of them had no fingers, the feet of many were bound in bloody bandages, and some were advanced into the deteriorations that their lips and ears were missing.
I don't know why-the price, perhaps, that women pay for their loveliness--but the disfigurements seemed more ghastly for the women than they were for the men. Many of the men had a defiant and even a januty air about them--a kind of pugnacious ugliness that was fascinating in itself. But shyness just looked cowed in the women, and hunger looked predatory. The disease was indiscernible in the many children I saw. They looked fit, if uniformly thin, and quite well. And they worked hard, all of those children. Their small fingers did the grasping for the whole of their tribe.
They'd seen us coming, and must've passed the word because, as we appraoched the hut, a man crawled out and stood to greet us. Two children came at once and supported him. He was tiny, reaching to just above my waist, and severly stricken with the disease. His lips and the lower part of his face were eaten away to a hard, knobby ridge of dark flesh that extended downwards from the cheeks to the hinges of his jaw. The jaw itself was exposed, as were the teeth and gums, and the gaping holes where his nose had been (Roberts 207)."

Drowsy Driving.... Almost as Bad as Drunk Driving!

Wooooo, I've driven so much lately, and it seems like every time I set foot in my car I instantly want to fall asleep. It's so dangerous! I've never had such a hard time keeping my eyes open while driving. It scares me.... I think stuff like, "I can shut my eyes if I just drive in a straight line...." BAD IDEA! So I adjust my seat, stretch, turn on the AC (full blast of course) and roll down the windows even though its only 15 degrees outside... rolling down the windows actually helps! I'm starting to believe what they taught me in drivers ed.... However, after I roll up the windows, I'm freezing so I turn on the heat full blast and start nodding off again... My eyes fill with water and my lids nearly shut. I start drifting into the other lane or off the road completely.
Why does driving put me to sleep?
It scares me....(yes, my driving scares me....)

Oh Randizzle

Seems like every time we hang out, something bad happens. A few years ago Randy and I went 4wheeling up on this mountain. We were having such a fun time, then Randy turns around to see myself laying on the ground trapped underneath the flipped over 4wheeler. It was such a scary moment. He thought I was going to die, as well as everybody else around, but I was ok.
Today Randy and I hung again for the 1st time in a very long time. We went up on that same mountain so I could get some pictures for my photography class. I got some pictures and then started to reverse down this long muddy path with snow banks on each side. Not really paying attention to what I was doing, I ran my car right into a snowbank.... Oops. We spent forever trying to get it out, and then we saw a police man parked in his truck a few hundred feet away. Luckily he saved the day and pulled my car out of the snowbank with his mighty truck.
But damn Randy, we sure do have some adventures.... hehe, especially on that mountain.

and now it starts

Have you ever wanted something so bad? So bad that you are willing to do anything to achieve it? That's how I feel right now. February 1st--it starts. I spent this weekend having one super indulgence of my villain, and now that will be the last time I shall ever enjoy it.

Dad:

Happy Birthday Daddy! Without you, daddy, my life would be a mess. Without you, I wouldn't be the person I am today, nor would I be achieving my goals. I just want to thank you for raising me, pushing me to be my best, teaching me wrong from right, and for just being my father. I love you more than anything! You're humble, kind, wise, intelligent, and have an exuberant sense of humor. That's for being a wonderful role-model and endearing father. I love you!
Happy Birthday!

Love Your Daughter,

Maki