The day before yesterday I was sitting the in the hotel restaurant having breakfast and two men were working our side cleaning the window right in front of my table. It was about 10:00 AM and starting to become hot outside. One of the 2 men was about 25 and the other about 40. They were painstakingly removing the wood warmish of the window so they could repaint it later. It was a tedious manual job that I had done myself a few years a go. With a little sand paper you have to get it all the crevasses and then blow the dust off and repeat. It is not a hard job just tedious. Anyway, as I was sitting there waiting for my food we looked at each other several times and I smiled and nodded my head. I was getting increasingly more uncomfortable just sitting there knowing that the food that I was about to eat was a couple days worth of their salary. I felt pretty ashamed and thought about doing something nice for them. Buying food was probably inappropriate. First of all, they were working and second, it would have been somewhat pretentious. But a cold drink was probably OK. So I decided to ask the waiter to bring them some fruit juice.
All of this took about 5-10 minutes. I was pretty uncomfortable sitting there reading my news paper and waiting for food.
A waiter came by my table and saw that I was looking at the two men outside cleaning the windows in front of me. Before I had a chance to ask him he went by the window and gestured to the two men to get lost and then he came by my table. I asked him if it would appropriate to buy those guys some drinks. He didn’t quite understood what I was asking. So I asked if he could take 2 glasses of juice to those guys and tell them in Hindi that I had just done that exact work on my house back at home in US. The waiter then said “certainly, sir. I will take them in the back and give the juice to them.” He then went to talk to the manager waiting at the door to probably ask for permission to do this. I saw him getting 2 glasses of juice but I never saw the 2 men drinking it. A couple of minutes later I saw the 2 guys come by the window to collect their tools and then they walked off.
Hmm, I thought. I hope I did not get them trouble. Probably they were just told to get lost for a while and then come back later when there were no guests around.
Local affluent Indians here can easily separate themselves from this extreme socio-economical disparity. I am sure over time it will be able to do that or at least be less uncomfortable. The way this dilemma has been explained to me is that by the fact of me being here the life of these folks are already better and they very much benefit from the wealth that gets tricked down to their level.
In retrospect I probably should not have bought those guys a drink. It is not a big deal; I am sure I will make bigger blunders. One mistake that avoided was taking pictures of Muslim women in Berka at Char Minar the day before. I did know that I would not have been OK but I was reminded of it by a local student I had befriended.