On the 13th of July 2019 me and my family flew to India for 17 days and during this short period I learned so many new lessons first hand. On the way from the airport to our house one of the first things I noticed is the huge amounts of poverty. As I'd been to India before I was already aware of how much poverty but one thing I've never done is compared that to homelessness in the UK. We're very lucky that from birth the government does a huge amount of work to make sure that our basic needs are taken care of. We're all allowed to go to school for free, we are given free healthcare and if we even can get a loan from the government to allow us to get a degree. Even if we say we have nothing we at least have our basic rights taken care of. As I looked down to the hundreds lying in the streets I couldn't help but think that these people have nothing other than what's around them. There's no one who is looking out for these people, no one who is trying to help them and no one to care for them if something bad happens to them.
There’s a lot of motivational speakers that I listen to like Eric Tomas, Les Brown and Tony Robbins who came up from nothing which is always going to be amazing. However, someone coming up in a place like India from being homeless is something completely different. I know from living in the UK that if you want to progress there’s many different routes you can take to move forward even if you are homeless. There are homeless shelters, kitchens and volunteering/job opportunities. On the other hand, in India whatever you do has to be off your own back and without undermining what other great people have done in the past, some people on the streets don't have any education and have no possible route back into the system. It’s difficult to imagine what it would be like to live your life with not a single person willing to help you but for millions of people in India that’s the case.
This experience was one that humbled me greatly. Many people I know like to brag about everything that they've done, all the money that they have or how far they've come in life and they have every right to do. Nonetheless, I wonder how differently they would feel about themselves and their life if they were born below the poverty line in India.