Although we had only been walking for a few minutes time had seemed to transcend its normal medium of minutes, seconds and hours. It took me along time and most of the world to realize that home is where you feel most safe at night and comfortable in the morning. I have never my home before, nor did I think I ever would but desperate times call for desperate measures. I am fleeing India not because I want to but because I have to. This overpopulated juggernaut has become a survival of the fittest, as food is now worth more than gold and water more precious then a male newborn. Beside me stands my brother, an inquisitive eight year old who seems to have all the right answers, his only weakness being his innocence. My mother and father left us when we were of an age in which they thought I could handle the full time responsibility of caring for a child. Six years old. .
As we walk outside the borders of the past, we look to a new, bleak horizon, which shows opportunity but disguises in the most clinical of ways. India is made up of two components the rich and the poor, which equate to one insolvable equation. I never understood how a country with such rich beauty and culture could be unlivable but this is the case, and I must accept it. With one backpack between us my brother and I are in search of a better life, but more importantly the essentials, shelter and substance. A few hours past before my brother asks me a question that had never crossed my mind.
"Brother will you think about me when I die?".
I don't respond, because for the first time in my lifetime I'm scared, scared of not being able to provide a life for my brother most importantly and myself secondly.
We had walked for what seemed like hours before finally coming across a day cart in what looked like Nepal. My brother had all of seven rupees to his name whilst I had enough to afford some rice and a litre of water. .