This is my friend Nathu and I
Recently on my travels in India, I came across this modest human busking in the streets of Pushkar. We connected on many values that we both seemed to have found on our individual journeys of survival and backgrounds of poverty. Immediately, we found a sense of kinship through this relating. We would spend a lot of time together, often crowded around chai stands sharing sugar heavy rounds of red tea, interchanged with some BYO thermos pu’er. We shared stories of family and struggle mostly- dreaming big from the virtue of hope.
As we connected through tea, music and these stories, he lovingly invited me over to eat with his family a number of times. I first arrived at dusk to a village of tents made of sheet plastic and bamboo on the outskirts of town. This was home to Nathu’s family, along with dozens of other displaced families that cannot afford stable living conditions.
I soon realised each meal they prepared me chipped away the very bare minimum resources they had to get through the week. With guilt, I expressed my desires not to take so much, to which he graciously offered more.
He humbly shared some words that struck me, as they were the words of my mother.
Whenever I offered grievances around using their resources, he would exclaim, ‘brother, everybody eats’
My mother would often share these words with me when we were younger, scraping the barrel for our own living, whilst she emptied her pockets for literally anybody in struggle that came her way. It was something I saw came from her own experiences of living in street bound poverty. There’s a specific generosity I drew parallels to between the two of them, something that warmed me and moved me to the core.
It felt confronting to receive this level of regard, while simultaneously aware of their limited resources and low financial returns. I did some math and worked out that it it costs him approximately 900 rupees per day to support this family of 4, while he would make an average of 300.
Considering this, on top of some major medical bills and no opportunities to get above, I spent the last days sitting with Nathu generating a business plan and a system for how he could reach his financial goals in order to get to a point where he could make money more easy for his family to survive.
He shared a dream of one day owning a camel so he could create some easier business offering tours around the desert lands. We played with some ideas of how I could support him beyond finances, to brand and market himself to secure business, and felt this was a viable starting point.
We broke down the costs, how to brand and manage the business, and set out to begin immediately.
I purchased a smart phone for him so we may stay in contact through WhatsApp, and so that he could in the future use this to accumulate and manage contacts, create a digital presence and co-ordinate camel tours.
In summary,
the idea is this
From all the funds we generate here, I will pass onto Nathu and his family.
First, they will clear their existing medical bills.
Second, they will pay for their two children’s intuition fees for one year of school.
Third, they will purchase a camel.
10% of all sales through The Hive will go towards this goal until we have reached the estimated total goal of $1500 AUD.