kids.

Ninos, children, kids, babies...everywhere. Kids climb on their mothers arms, crawl on the sidewalk, stare up at me with their big brown eyes. Kids play on the street corners, tattered and torn; their feet cracked and bare, and heads matted in tangled hair. Bombay, Gorakhpur, Chennai, to Kathmandu; their faces are all still with me.
I never wanted to go to Goa. I did not want to be that tourist. I did not want to lay on a beach in India, where millions of people are homeless and hungry living in some of the worst poverty in the world. I never wanted to go, but I did anyway. I wanted to go to the beautiful beach, just like everyone. I was drawn to the Ocean, and the waves, and longed for something reminiscent of home. Something similar to the beautiful coasts I spent my whole life growing up on. This Coast, in Goa by the Arabian Sea, is nothing like the Coast I love so dearly. This Coast is in India.


Days ago now, a distant dream, a faraway place. There is a pounding noise; a beating drum and a hammer tapping metal. There is a pounding noise and it is bothering me. This noise is bothering me while I lay here. I lay here bare boned, lazy, and privileged. I lay here in the sun, my skin naked to your eyes; your body is covered from neck to toes. I am laying here relaxing, and I am annoyed that something is bothering my peaceful slumber. Yet, I am laying here, and I am laying in India. This is India, how could I forget?


I look up in a daze. My vision is blurred with the bright sun, my face caked in speckles of sand. I look up to see you standing there; feet at attention and eyes gazing down. Your eyes are gazing down on me. Your little dancing feet begin to move, and your body shakes in rhythm; covered in a black cloak of feathers. You look like a little dancing crow, your feathers shimmering in the sunlight. Your face is scrunched up in concentration, body swaying and moving, and keeping in time with the rhythm of fingers on a drum. Your sister, or brother, or friend -because it changes with each girl, and with every day- sits watching, making the beat. Your costume is thrust off, discarded and crumpled in the sand. Your stage is cemented in the sand, constructed with your own hands.


The poles stand at attention; rope taut, ready and waiting, for you. You place a stack of shiny silver vases on your little head, and grabbing the slanted pole, shimmy up the bamboo trunk. The drum is beating; beating with your little dancing feet. You grab the tightrope with your toes, clenching and curling over the fraying ends. Now you begin a slow procession across your makeshift stage. Bouncing in balance and rhythm, the rope stretches under your weight. Reaching the end of this tightrope, high above our heads, you scramble to sit upright on the pyramid of poles.


At the end of this performance, your companion disassembles the stage. Poles come toppling down as they are unearthed, and the rope is untied, leaving not a trace in the sand. While your companion packs up, there you are with your little dancing feet running up to me. Hands outstretched and a look of indignation in your eyes, you hold out a tin plate in my direction.


You worked for your rupees. You put on a show, so why do I see faces turning the other way? Many barely look up, but simply put out their hands and shoo you away, as if you were a stray animal. Some gladly return the favor, placing rupees in your palm. White, bare, sun burnt skin against your chocolate, cinnamon, toffee.


I want to run away and dive in the ocean, and I feel like a hypocrite for just laying here in the sun. Now I write this from a far away place, where these faces are a distant dream. You are still there on that beach in India, and you are still putting on a performance in the hopes that a disenchanted tourist will notice your hard work.


I am told these performers, these travelers, these children; are gypsies. Traveling and working, migrating all over India to walk a tightrope for rupees of gold.


I ask your name, but all you can say is 'thank you madame.' You don't understand my English in your glittering India.


This whole situation seems wrong. Why do I get to lay here, and you with your small hands and crumpled hair, work all day. You are not the only one either. Laying in my sandy blanket filled with books, lotion, and my bare skin; girls come and go all day. Girls filled with jewels, beads, bangles, necklaces, and earrings. They lay them out in front of me on a tattered piece of cloth, "please just have a look, it's free to look." Some are older and defined in wrinkles and posture, some are teenagers, and some are no older than ten.


I am laying here bothered by somebody disturbing my "holiday," and when I realize who it is making that noise, or who it is laying their jewelry out for me; I can only feel wrecked with guilt. I don't know if we even belong in a place like this, and I'm beginning to feel strongly that we don't.