We often do not realize how safe and easy going our lives are. I can be the first one to say this since I live in a well-to-do suburb of Washington, DC. Why am I bringing up this point? We are so comfortable with our lives that we forget the situation of people who are less fortunate and those who face a multitude of daily hardships. A recent travel to India changed my outlook of life and what I want to consider for a professional career.
My parents are immigrants from India. They lived in India throughout childhood and until completion of college. They came to the United States for graduate studies. From my early childhood to this day, my parents constantly tell me about the difference between our life in the U.S. and that in their native land. As a first generation American, I did not quite understand what they were saying and often ignored them with an expression of annoyance. However, my
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Our usual trips involve visiting my parents’ hometown and the surrounding locations in the state of Kerala. During our last trip, we stopped at two major cities in India, Mumbai and Chennai. My father took me to a slum area in Chennai, where I witnessed extreme urban poverty. The shacks there were made of scrap metal and cardboard, barefooted, malnourished children were walking around, household and human waste was piled in a big mount, and there were open sewers everywhere with black, pungent smelling water. In that slum, I saw, face-to-face, extreme poverty, despair, poor sanitation, hunger and ill health. My father and I were walking down an alley. As we turned a corner, countless people were sitting on the side of the street, begging in their native language. My father tried as best as he could to suffice them with change, but there were too many. We soon left the alley, and I continued to think about the incident, the people and the poor conditions in the