What I Learned from a Beautiful Sister

When I visited Fatehpur Sikhri in Northwest India four years ago, I looked poverty in the eye. It had been beautiful — this “City of Victory” — filled with the splendor of the Mughal Emperor and his golden queen. Now, it’s another tourist attraction, a ghost town where poor tour guides sell their scraps of knowledge and even poorer children sell cheap trinkets.

The sun’s glare was harsh and heavy, a tangible presence that weighed my body down. The stench was overpowering. Swarms of giant blue flies followed us as we walked through the city. I hardly noticed the intricately carved walls and windows, too preoccupied with trying to shake away the layer of dust that clung onto my clothes. The city seemed to me the embodiment of all the Western preconceptions of India: filthy, poverty-stricken. Although my parents called this land home, this was not a country of which I wanted to be part.

My hair stuck to my head. I felt greasy and dirty. I could not understand how anyone could live in a place like this. I was embarrassed by the people’s pleading stares, their clothes and faces worn down to the color of dust. Beggars gathered around us, grabbing at our bright American clothes. I shrunk away as their shrill voices grinded my ears. They tried to sell us guidebooks and faded postcards, using stolen bits of English. The language sounded heavy on their tongues. Their hands curved into bowls. I looked down at my feet, my ears burning with shame.

My mother held onto me and said, “There’s nothing we can do. If we give to one, they won’t let us leave until we give to all.” But their cries continued to fill my ears: “Madam, Madam, ap ye khari hoke dekho. Ye Bahot Achha Hai” (“Won’t you come and see this, it’s very nice, Madam”).

I felt a tug at the back of my shirt. Turning around, I saw a little girl, about seven- or eight-years-old. Her dark eyes squinted up at me from a face covered by a thin film of red dust. Her clothes were tattered, the color faded away from constant exposure to the sun. She couldn’t speak English, but she thrust her hand towards me, showing me she had something to sell. I refused to take the dull metal compass she held out. I had no use for it. But my conscience wouldn’t let me go. I reached into my pocket and offered her three coins without taking her merchandise. She stared at my hand for a moment, surprised. She looked me straight in the eye, pushed my hand away and stepped back.

I was stunned. She wouldn’t accept my money. I looked at her again, but this time I didn’t see the dust in her face or the poverty etched into her frame. I could only see the power in her eyes. She would not take charity.

She never spoke a word to me, but her voice still rings in my head. She had the courage to look at her own situation, to be proud of who she was and to show me that she did not equal her surroundings. I see that same brazen stubbornness in myself — in the way I raise my voice and speak my mind when I feel like I’m not being heard, in the way I tilt my chin and clench my fists when people laugh at my dad’s thick Indian accent. As I stared into her gleaming eyes under the sweltering Indian heat, I realized that you can live in friction with your surroundings and still be beautiful.

I watched her walk away, her bare feet moving slowly toward a group of older women. I’d never know whom she loved, never fight with her about trivial things or share secrets in the dark. But she felt like my sister.

Although the difficulties of her life were too painful for me to grasp, I knew what it was like to feel stranded and alone. Growing up in America, Desis need to pierce through dirt and stone to plant South Asian roots in this soil. We are stepping stones for the next generation. Just like me, she must have spent restless nights glaring at the moon and wondering where in the world she could feel accepted. Yet unlike me, her struggles had given her a core of steel. Perhaps it starts with not being ashamed of the skin you’re born in.

If you took me apart, you would have to dig through layers of soft things, light music and quiet words in order to find the growing glints of metal. It’s a gradual opening that happens, a melting, an acceptance and an affirmation. The metal forms slowly: the core opens, trickles down to the fingertips and toes, until I learn to fill the spaces I occupy in this world.

Poverty is everywhere we look, but strength is hidden in secret places.

Carol Kuruvilla is a journalism student at New York University. She's currently studying abroad in Shanghai, China.