Opportunity: Lessons from India’s Social Entrepreneurs

My friend and mentor Richard Alderson, co-founder of Journeys for Change and UnLtd India, is hosting a free webinar on his lessons learned throughout a career immersed in the world of Indian social entrepreneurship.

If you’re looking for inspiration and insight into innovation, social enterprise, and India, this will be worth your while.  Register here:  http://bit.ly/TMhhHN

Further details below.

Journeys for Change invites you to:

Innovative India: Remarkable Lessons From India’s Social Entrepreneurs On How To Create Greater Profit & Impact In The World

Are you a leader who is any one of the following:

• Passionate about making a difference in the world?
• Looking for inspiration?
• Looking to deepen your knowledge of social entrepreneurship?
• Looking for ‘what next?’
• Curious about India?

Join Richard Alderson, co-founder of Journeys for Change, for a short, stimulating webinar where you can:

• Be inspired by the stories of some of India’s most exciting changemakers
• Learn how their innovative business models can help you create greater profit and impact in your work
• Learn how others who’ve taken part in the journeys have personally benefitted and changed their organisations as a result

Journeys for Change takes international leaders to learn from and share with India’s most inspiring social entrepreneurs. Previous participants have come from organisations as diverse as JPMorgan, Nike, Citigroup, Novo Nordisk and Habit For Humanity.

Richard is also the co-founder of UnLtd India, an award-winning social entrepreneur incubator.

The webinar will take place on 12 December 2012 at 10.00-11.00am Pacific / 1.00-2.00pm Eastern / 6.00-7.00pm UK time / 7.00-8.00pm European time / 11.30pm-12.30am India time.

Places are limited so please register as soon as possible to ensure you can attend.

Click here to reserve your place: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2082242273368238592

An Outsider’s Perspective, Part III

After reading Part II, you may have wondered what Dr. Ela Bhatt and Jason Sadler have to do with one another.  After all, Dr. Bhatt is revered as a pioneering force for inclusive social change, whereas Sadler never even launched his social venture.

Though different, both of their stories illustrate the same concept, which is overly simplified in this equation:

Local solutions + outsider perspective – ego = transformation

 

Here’s how it breaks down.

Local solutions
When she speaks about SEWA, Dr. Ela Bhatt makes it clear that she is not the driving force behind the organization; migrant women working the informal sector are.  They have the most at stake, and they know what they want in a way that nobody else can.

The most lasting and robust solutions to a community’s problems will come from the community itself.  Nobody understands a community’s dynamics as intimately as its members do.  A homegrown, organic solution is imbued with local wisdom, needs, and aspirations.

Unfortunately, overuse of the phrase “local solutions” has all but blanched it of meaning throughout much of the development and social sectors.  For many, it’s easier to pay lip service to the concept than it is to step back and let the locals take the lead.

Therefore, local solutions are all too often swept aside by outsiders who think they know better.  But a solution that is imposed by an outsider will not stick.  Worse, even if it was born from good intentions, it will do lasting damage.

Outsider perspective
Can a community transform itself through local solutions alone?  Absolutely.  But if that’s the case, why isn’t every community in the world healthy and prosperous?

Sometimes an outsider’s perspective can serve as a spark to bring local solutions to life.  An outsider can be a mouthpiece for the community, amplifying its voice and providing visibility and leverage in places where it had none before.   An outsider can make a community relevant to other outsiders.

Ela Bhatt is an Indian woman working with Indian women.  Jason Sadler is a white American who had never been to Africa.  Though the gap between Sadler and Africa is wider than the one between Dr. Bhatt and SEWA’s constituency, neither was born an insider.

Dr. Bhatt is an outsider, but she’s a deep listener who shows genuine faith in local solutions and the people who create them.  Dr. Bhatt is effective because she fortifies local solutions with her own unique insight, experience and knowledge.

Jason Sadler also has valuable knowledge and experience.  He knows how to start a business and how to inspire widespread action through social media.  But as a social entrepreneur, he was ineffective because he imposed a solution on a problem that wasn’t there, with zero regard for the consequences.

Ego
You can never remove your own ego from the equation, but when an outsider’s ego isn’t grounded in the perspective of the community, everything is thrown off.  An inflated ego disrupts your ability to listen.  When you don’t listen, you impose.

An outsider who sees himself as the savior of a marginalized community is not a social entrepreneur; he is a missionary.  That delusion is the spine of what’s derisively known in international aid as the White Man’s Burden, a label thrown at Jason Sadler more than once.

Whiteness and ego are inextricably linked, at least in a Western context.  I grew up being taught that I was a citizen of the greatest, most powerful nation on earth.  It was up to America to solve the world’s problems, because nobody else was capable.  Talk about a superiority complex.  Had I been born black, maybe I would have seen through it a little more quickly.

It bears stating that this type of tribal egotism is not restricted to white America.  In Bombay, a young businesswoman told me that she was starting a non-profit.  Her plan was to drive around in a taxi and seek out the poorest-looking street kids she could find.  She’d pull them into her cab, then have them spend the day with her.  During this time, she’d explain to them why it was bad to live on the street instead of in a house.  Also, she’d teach them how to wash their hands.

The businesswoman went on and on about her plans to fix the broken lives of others (and then asked if I could help her find start-up funding).  As she spoke, I remembered a conversation I’d overheard between a music teacher and his student.  The teacher was chastising the student for a mediocre performance.  The teacher said, “you hit the wrong notes because you think performing is all about you.  When you play with ego, the music can’t flow through you.”

When social entrepreneurs play with ego, local solutions can’t flow through them.  The ego seeks quick fixes, but those don’t exist.  Community transformation doesn’t just require humility and patience; it requires trust, optimism in the face of disappointment, and detachment.  That’s not a balance that comes easily to many people.

Sadler’s 1 Million T-Shirts was born from good intentions, which are junk food for the ego.  Good intentions can be a starting block, but without humility – the mindframe of a student, the ability to listen deeply and without judgment – they are blinding.

–

I started my career in the world of social entrepreneurship as junior staff at the global headquarters of Ashoka.  The air crackled with new, world-changing ideas. Social entrepreneurs were the new heroes, and I was surrounded by them.

Within my first week on the job, I was convinced that I needed to start a social enterprise of my own.  It didn’t matter what I did; the important thing was that I joined the ranks of the heroes.

A fellow intern took it a step further.  Convinced that he had an idea that could disrupt the cycle of global poverty, he set about launching an NGO.  He selected a location for his pilot project – a country in Africa in which he had never set foot.

Remember the Tolstoy quote from Part I?

“Everybody thinks of changing humanity, but nobody thinks of changing himself.”

At the time, this description fit me and my fellow intern better than a pre-donated t-shirt.  We were obsessed with changing humanity, but completely unaware of ourselves.  And in our self-obsession, the change in humanity which we sought had become irrelevant.  (For better or for worse, the other intern never made it to Africa and I never started my own social enterprise.)

Years after my internship with Ashoka in DC, I was sitting at the feet of Jayesh Patel, a man more comfortable with the label “Gandhian” than “social entrepreneur.”  In 1990, Jayesh founded Manav Sadhna, an organization that now provides healthcare and education for more than 4,500 women and children living in slums in Ahmedabad.

Jayesh told us that when asked what the greatest threat to India would be after independence, Gandhi had replied, “heartless intellectuals.”  To be a heartless intellectual is to make the world fit the narrow filter of your own ego.

The ego breeds pity.  Pity, Jayesh said, is heartless.  Pity is a barrier to human connection.  It strips people of their humanity and turns them into objects.  Pity fuels misery.  Logical solutions that are born from pity solve nothing at all.

“If you want to achieve impact in the world, don’t start from the perspective of logic or intellect,” Jayesh told us.  “Start with relationships.  Connect with people, no matter who they are, without pity, without judgment.  Drop your ego and embrace everyone as your equal.

To do this, you must know yourself.  When you know yourself, you can start to change yourself.  When you change yourself, you create ripples; everyone you touch will become an agent of change.”

These words struck me dumb the minute I heard them.  I’ve had more than a year to digest them, and I still don’t fully comprehend them.  The words are counterintuitive; they fly in the face of my sense of personal urgency and moral obligation to do as much good in the world as I’m capable of.  They’re also steeped in spirituality, which is a red flag for me.  And yet somehow, the words make sense and I return to them again and again.

Gandhi, Jayesh, and Tolstoy all preached the same thing.  Ego is a delusion.  It blinds us from understanding our individual selves.  Without self-knowledge, we can’t recognize our shared humanity.  Only humility can overcome the ego.  Therefore, only humility can transform humanity.

–

A note:

In researching this entry, I discovered that Gandhi considered Tolstoy a major influence in life and sought out his advice on issues political and spiritual.

In 1908, Tolstoy wrote A Letter to a Hindu, advising Indians under the yoke of the British that “love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills, and in it you too have the only method of saving your people from enslavement.”  The Hindu in the title was Tarak Nath Das, who published the original letter in  the Indian newspaper Free Hindustan, which Gandhi read and republished in South Africa.  This sparked a correspondence between Gandhi and Tolstoy that lasted until Tolstoy’s death in 1910.

An Outsider’s Perspective, Part II

In Part I, I talked about Indira Ranamagar, an “insider” social entrepreneur who founded Prisoners Assistance Nepal.  Here are two stories of “outsiders,” both of whom took a step towards the inside, with very different results.

 

Story One:

Self-Employed Women’s Association, or SEWA, was born in 1971 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.  A group of migrant women who worked in a local cloth market approached the Women’s Wing of the Textile Labour Association. The women were fed up with the horrible working conditions and the apathy with which society treated them.  They demanded change.  The head of the Women’s Wing, Dr. Ela Bhatt, heard their case.     

 

These women knew what they wanted – workers’ rights, collective bargaining power, job security.  And beyond their basic needs, they had loftier aspirations.  Chandaben, a woman who sold used scraps of cloth in the bazaar, is credited with a quote that helped launch a movement:  “We may be poor, but we are so many. Why don’t we start a bank of our own?  Our own women’s bank, where we are treated with the respect and service that we deserve.”  

 

Dr. Bhatt became ally and champion to these women and worked tirelessly to help them realize their demands.  As a lawyer, academic, and head of the TLA, Dr. Bhatt had access to people and resources that the women didn’t know existed.  She published articles, confronted leaders of industry, and organized public meetings that gave voice to hundreds of migrant women.  Out of all of this, a movement was born.

 

Today, SEWA offers poor women access to dozens of services, including health care, legal aid, and housing.  The association may be best known for SEWA Bank, a social business that provides financial services tailored to meet the needs of more than 125,000 women working in the informal sector.  As of 2008, the bank’s working capital was $18.6 million.  

–

 

Story Two:

Jason Sadler is an American entrepreneur and the founder of iwearyourshirt.com.  For a fee, he and his team will promote your company by wearing a shirt with your logo on it, then taking pictures of themselves as human billboards. 

 

Two years ago, Sadler had an idea. His closet was overflowing with t-shirts he no longer wanted, as were, he assumed, closets all over the U.S.  Just throwing away thousands of unwanted shirts would be a waste.  Even if young Americans didn’t need their old t-shirts, somebody probably did.

 

And where is there greater need than in Africa?  

 

Sadler launched an initiative called 1 Million T Shirts and with this video, began calling for donations:

 

Though he had never been to Africa, Sadler was convinced that the epidemic of t-shirtlessness raged like wildfire.  Many Africans didn’t “half a half a shirt to their name,” and if he could bridge their excess demand with America’s excess supply, he’d be doing the world a great service.  (But as he says in the video, no long sleeves — Africa is hot, remember?)

 

With the launch of the video and the website, there was a deluge of t-shirt donations and rabid criticism.  

 

The donations came from people moved by the project’s slogan: “share the wealth, share your shirts; we’re going to change the world.”  

 

The criticism came primarily from the international aid community.  They decried the project as illogical, misguided, and dangerous.  Shirtlessness was not, in fact, an African epidemic.  Worse, a million free t-shirts would flood local markets, ruining the capacity of lower income merchants to earn money.  On top of all that, the African cotton industry was dying a prolonged death in the international market; in this light, discarded American t-shirts seemed more like a slap in the face than a gift.  

 

Much of the anger over the initiative was directed at Sadler himself.  In the eyes of his critics, he had unwittingly become a manifestation of all that has always been wrong with Western aid.  

 

To Sadler’s credit, he was open to re-evaluating his strategy.  He began talking to one of his most vocal critics, a Ugandan-born social entrepreneur named TMS Ruge.  These conversations led Sadler to scrap his original plan of donating t-shirts to Africa.  Together, Ruge and Stadler reshaped the vision of the project.  

 

The new plan: 1 Million T-Shirts would continue to collect donations, but instead of sending them overseas, the t-shirts would become material for handmade laptop covers, which would then be sold through retail outlets.  The profit would go to setting up scholarships for promising students from all over Africa. 

 

However, before the launch of the revamped project, Sadler pulled the plug.  “It didn’t feel right to me.  It didn’t feel like it was going to what I wanted it to do.  When we completely changed the focus of it…it didn’t seem like it was going to work for me.”

–

These two stories are so different that it seems almost unfair to compare them.

Dr. Ela Bhatt is one of the world’s greatest living social reformers.  She’s one of just ten members of The Elders, an international human rights council founded by Nelson Mandela and chaired by Desmond Tutu.  A few years back, Hillary Clinton named Dr. Bhatt as her personal heroine.

Jason Sadler is a cocky young entrepreneur who styles himself after Richard Branson and Tim Ferris.  His product is his personality and vice versa.  If he’s ignorant with regards to the nuanced world of international development, it’s because he’s been too busy in his attempt to build a branded empire.

But these two stories are more interrelated than you might think.  The stark contrast between Dr. Bhatt and Sadler is actually helpful.  In their differences, the pillars of the outsider narrative become clear.

More on this in Part III.

An Outsider’s Perspective, Part I

“Everyone thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.”  Leo Tolstoy, 1900

Those are some pretty broad strokes you’re painting with there, Leo.  Regardless, your message is clear: before I go telling others how to live their lives, I’d better sort out my own first.  Fair enough.  

 

However, take the words of the Tolstoy quote at face value and they don’t ring quite as true.  “Nobody thinks of changing himself?”  

 

As a society, we think obsessively about changing ourselves.  Education, prayer, meditation, therapy, exercise and haircuts are among the myriad avenues through which we pursue self-improvement.  It’s not like we’re the first generation to think about this stuff, either.  So why aren’t we all enlightened by now?  

 

To change yourself – on a real and fundamental level – you have to know yourself.  You have to understand why you are who you are.  

 

I am far from being self-aware, so I can’t tell you how to get there.  It’s a lifelong undertaking with no tangible finish line.  There is, however, a logical starting point: the accident of birth.

 

Even before we enter the world, we’ve inherited our place in it.  We are born into our race, gender, religion, appearance, nationality, and the nature of our upbringing.  These are the filters that shape our worldviews and how the world views us.  In other words, the lines were drawn long ago and by virtue of being born, we’re on a side.

 

Think about the side you were born on.  Has it changed – have you changed – since you first inherited it?  Maybe you’ve moved to a different country, renounced your religion, had a gender reassignment surgery.  In that case, you have indeed changed sides.  But you’re still on a side.  There is no such thing as a neutral identity.  

 

Even if, logically, we know this, it doesn’t stop us from seeing ourselves as neutral.  Being born a white male into an unequal society places me very squarely on the side with most of the power.  I cannot delude myself in thinking that I’m neutral, that I’m the norm against which to judge the rest of the world.  In terms of the gross privilege I subconsciously assume is my birthright, I’m a minority.  

 

More on the delusion of identity neutrality later.  For now, let’s return to the Tolstoy quote.  Whether or not everyone actually thinks about changing humanity, many endeavor to do so; a subsection of these people are called social entrepreneurs.  

 

If I’m a social entrepreneur, no matter what my social enterprise is doing, my job is deeply and inherently political.  I have taken it upon myself to upend the social status quo.  I want disruptive social change.  There is a marginalized group of people out there who deserve to enjoy the benefits of power; I’m throwing my weight on their side, hoping to tip the scales in their favor. 

 

If my job is to help the powerless become powerful, what is the source of my own power?  The answer brings us back to the accident of birth.

 

The Insider

If the social entrepreneur is an “insider” – if she was born into the marginalized community she wants to empower – her power stems from her capacity as a free thinker.  

 

Take Indira Ranamagar, for example.  As a girl growing up in rural Nepal, she was raised without a formal education and with the expectation that that she’d become a housewife.  But she was also born with a fiercely independent personality.  Even as a child, she felt the need to question things others took for granted.  She often challenged boys to feats of strength and speed.  (Whether she won or not is irrelevant, but she says she did, most of the time, and I believe her.)

 

At an early age, Indira had already decided that she would make her own path.  The impetus to truly break the mold occurred in her late teens.  Indira visited a local jail and discovered young children languishing behind bars.  As the children of criminals, they had no home but prison during their parents’ incarceration.  

 

As a free thinker, Indira would not accept a status quo that incarcerated innocent children, so she set out to change it.  She lobbied the prisoners and prison system to release the children.  In the meantime, Indira built a colorful group home in the village.  Soon the home was populated with the children of prisoners.  Indira became caretaker and nurturer to an ever-growing family.  

Over time, Indira would go on to build more homes for more children, as well as to spearhead prison reform in her country.  Today, she has been running Prisoners’ Assistance Nepal for more than twenty years.  Her organization provides relief, education, advocacy, and support for hundreds of prisoners and their families.    

 

The Outsider

Conversely, a social entrepreneur is an outsider if he is not a member of the marginalized community he seeks to empower.  

 

There are aspects of the outsider’s perspective than can be very powerful.  Sometimes, being an outsider implies access to resources, networks, ideas, and funding that might be beyond the reach of a marginalized community.  Also, the outsider brings personal experience and expertise that may help the community address its challenges in new and innovative ways.    

 

But when an outsider challenges the status quo within a community that’s not his, the stakes are different – lower, usually.  When Indira took a stand instead of doing what was expected of her (marrying a farmer and focusing only on her domestic duties), she knew that she risked excommunication from her home community.  The risk of excommunication does not carry the same weight for someone who “belongs” somewhere else. 

 

Because the risk level is different, the outsider must be hyper-aware of his role in the marginalized community.  What’s on the line for him personally?  Why does he want to change a community that he doesn’t come from?  If he succeeds, what will be thrown off course and who will be affected?  What are the parameters of his responsibility?  What is his next move?  

 

An outsider tips the scales in one direction or another with his first step towards the inside.  If he’s ignorant of his own weight (if he thinks he is identity neutral), he is delusional at best and dangerous at worst.  

I’ll explain why in Part II.

A Hot Cup of Status Quo

“If you want to change the world, stay home.”

This was advice from a friend doing her PhD in educational inequality. It came up while we were discussing global volunteering programs. “Instead of playing sports with Third World orphans, walk downtown and take a look at what your local multinational mining company is doing to the earth.” In other words: think globally, act locally and with stark honesty about the lens of privilege through which you see the world.

Later in the day, I walked by a Second Cup (a Canadian coffee chain; like Starbucks but more polite). Plastered across their windows are photos of children from the developing world, smiling perfect smiles that make poverty look kind of fun. Above, a poster reads, “Want to change the world? Start here.”

The phrase “change the world” caught my eye, as it always does. I’ve thrown this phrase around like so much confetti throughout my career in youth empowerment and social sector marketing. Only recently have I started to think about what it really means.

To change the world is to uproot current dynamics of power. It is a systemic, political process. It’s not easy to overthrow the status quo; resistance comes from both the powerful and the powerless. Each has much to lose. That this message didn’t make the final draft of the poster at Second Cup is not surprising.

The poster is publicity for a partnership between Second Cup and a Canadian NGO called Free the Children, which provides access to education, healthcare, clean water, and livelihood training internationally. From the little I know about the organization, they are very good at what they do. However, at no point on their website or in their literature do they claim to be changing the world. Instead, they sum up their development philosophy as this:

“If we’re going to help children break free from poverty, we must first empower their mothers, improve their schools, outfit their health clinics and build their water facilities.”

I was relieved to learn that Free the Children doesn’t claim to be changing the world. Word choice goes deeper than just semantics. The uncomfortable and inescapable truth is that Free the Children is operating within the status quo. No matter how village schools they build, no matter how effective they are at putting local communities at the center of their development programs, they are, de facto, the ones in power. You can see it in the language they use: “if we’re going to help…we must…”

First World power and Third World suffering.  We are strong, the Other is weak.  It’s a message too bleak for a poster, but it’s exactly what Second Cup wants to convey.

–

A premise:

A multinational corporation starts a mining operation in a poor country. Though it provides employment to the local community, the mine’s environmental degradation destroys local sources of food and livelihood. Children in the community are left hungry and without access to clean water. The poor country’s government does not intervene; many of the most powerful ministers are in the pocket of the multinational corporation.

Will Second Cup then launch an anti-mining campaign, denouncing the multi-national responsible? Are they going to ask you to donate a dollar to purge the corrupt from the foreign country’s ministries?

No, because taking a political stance like that would be picking a side. And for Second Cup, picking a side is equal to introducing Poison Lattes as the newest item on their winter menu. Picking a side means disrupting a status quo – not the one that keeps children hungry, but the one that keeps Second Cup in business.

If the water by the mine isn’t drinkable, it’s safer to support an NGO that provides clean water than it is to go toe-to-toe with the mining company who poisoned the supply. Treat the symptom instead of the disease. It’s better for business.

So we’re left with posters on the window whose claims are appealing but inherently misleading. We’re led to believe that by buying coffee at Second Cup, we are doing our part to change the world. We’re given the permission to feel satisfied that we’ve done our good deed for the day. I’m now deputized as a responsible citizen of the world. Thanks, Second Cup.

This sense of satisfaction can transform itself into a shield. Even if I don’t like what the mining company is doing, it’s going to be pretty damn hard to change the way the they do business, what with their lawyers and money and big drills. Thankfully, I’ve already changed the world today – a giant, faceless corporation told me so. So, know what, Acme Mines? Let’s call the whole thing a draw.

Had Second Cup’s poster proposed to feed hungry children instead of change the world, I wouldn’t have written this. But it didn’t. It asked me if I wanted to change the world. The poster is a glimpse into the inner mechanisms of a system, one that congratulates you for challenging the status quo when you’re actually buying into it.

Can I pour you a second cup?

–

Special thanks to Amanda Gebhard for the inspiration. Read her article “Pipeline to Prison: How schools shape a future of incarceration for Indigenous youth.”

The Umbrella

A memory from India:

From the window of my small flat in north Bombay, I watch as clouds the color of steel gather over the Arabian Sea.  The monsoon rains are late and in the meantime, May has been sweltering.  I’m supposed to be somewhere, but instead I’m sitting shirtless at my cracked plastic chair by the window, the noisy ceiling fan cooling the sweat on my back.  The pregnant clouds are hanging low above my neighborhood.  It’s time for me to make a move.

I walk downstairs to the narrow alley, which slants down from the butcher’s open storefront.  The men inside wave, one with a cleaver, and smile and I wish them asalaam aleiqum.  The smell of raw meat hangs in the heavy air.  Street cats sit on the storefront and watch the butchers with great interest.

At the alley corner there is a small grotto perched waist high on a red concrete base.  Inside an oval window draped with a jasmine garland, a white-skinned statuette of the Virgin Mary holds a baby Jesus.  ”PRAY FOR US,” implores the plaque on the bottom.  Here the wives of fishermen sell the morning catch from baskets they carry on their heads.  On days that I sleep in, the smell of fish coming up from this intersection is my alarm clock.

The clouds are multiplying.  I move quickly through of the labyrinth of alleyways, past corrugated iron walls and creeping vegetation.  Looking up at the sky, I can see the top of my neighborhood’s most distinctive landmark behind me: a massive, bright red chainlink fence enclosing one of the bigger bungalows, making its front garden look like a military compound or a tiger cage.  Next door, a ladder leads up from the street to a rooftop, its rungs wrapped in barbed wire.

I turn down another alley and come out at the Khar Danda traffic circle. Here, taxi cabs and huge cows park themselves between  the banyan tree in the middle of the circle and the shrine on the side of the road.  A friend dubbed this place Cow Island.  As I pass it, the skies open up.

This first rain of the season comes down in warm, heavy sheets, smacking the pavement like dull applause.   I’m already soaked by the time I duck into the nearest shop, which is just a few feet away.  A group of young men in collared shirts and skinny pants are dancing in the middle of the street, ecstatic as they throw their arms up against the downpour.  The roads have already started to flood by the time I turn to ask the man behind the counter if he has any umbrellas.  He sells me a small black one; I ask him if the price must have gone up in the last ten minutes.  There is no waiting out this storm, so I open the umbrella and step outside.

The main road is a series of deep puddles; the sidewalk isn’t any more promising.  It takes long strides to get over and around the deepest ones.  I skirt the part of the sidewalk usually favored by the cows as a toilet.  People stand in their windows to watch the rain pour down.  A young man and woman rush past, smiling and laughing as they tent newspaper over their heads.

The rain is warm but it has broken the heat.  Despite having lived in Bombay for almost three years, I’ve always made a quiet exit right before the monsoons hit, only to return once they’re over.  I walk quickly, happy to be caught in my first real storm and thankful for my umbrella.  As I cast a glance behind me to see what the banyan tree looks like wet, I’m shocked to find a short man underneath my umbrella.

I had no idea he was there.  I’m not sure how long he’s been beside me, but he has to jog to keep up.  He stares straight ahead, even when I look directly at him, and seems very focused on getting to where he’s going.  He could be my age or a bit younger.  With his mustache, polyester button-down, and skinny frame, I make the assumption that he’s from the slum in Khar Danda.  Maybe he’s making his way home from the bus stop.

We keep up a good pace; he still hasn’t looked at me.  I adjust the umbrella to make sure that we both are covered as fully as possible.  As cars pass by, they break the steady sound of the rain falling.

We’re coming up on the intersection where I need to turn.  I tell my companion in mangled Hindi that I’m going to the left.  ”Thik hai, bhai” – ok, older brother — and a waggle of the head; he runs straight ahead.

I smile and make my turn.  I look back; he does not.