Last two weeks have been back breaking for me. Apart from my usual work woes, I got back to Yoga and ventured on a weekend to Sham Shui Po to check out SOCO and its child mentorship scheme.
Sham Shui Po among other things is known for its poor mainland immigrant population and cage homes. Once a popular trade centre, it faded out when Hong Kong transformed into an Asian financial centre.
My tryst was an eye opener.
As I like to say, I occupy the road between the prosperous, chic Hong Kong and the slightly jaded, cramped bylanes of TST which lend to the view from the Peak without giving a whiff of the poverty and grime within.
If you ask me what Hong Kong without rouge and shimmer would be, I would first turn to the lures of SOHO, the raucous party-goers in LKF on a weekend, the Hollywood road with its exotica and painfully thin women with fake pouts and fake cleavages, swinging in suicidal heels along the jazzy Pottinger, Wyndham and Wellington streets.
Since I am an Indian expat with blinkers on, I will attempt to shed off my limited knowledge and point further to villas, cottages and buildings atop hills in Stanley and Repulse Bay. And then I will shake my head, glare through my kohl eyes and tell you, if this is not what you see, you might stumble upong the answer my friend.
As I was home on Sunday, I chose to travel to Sham Shui Po via the cross over to the red line at Lai King. I could feel a change in the air, the people, their clothing and their attitudes as soon as I stepped out at Lai King (you can call it my expatty short sightedness and snootiness)
I stepped out of the Sham Shui Po MTR on to the Apliu Street and like all my Eureka reactions to street markets, I smiled and smiled.
The first expected olfactory assault came from meat shops along the Kweilin Street where the SOCO office is located.
As it always happens my attempts to open the rusted door below the faded numberplate 117 failed.
After asking for Lai Shan in five different nasal tones on the phone, the Chinese woman cackling on the other side finally called her. She told me that I was not at the right gate.
After five minutes of frantic searching and braving the drilling gaze of two Indians, I finally found the entrance to 117, Kweilin Street.
A few steps up, I had my first glimpse of life shorn of the Hong Kong glitter.
While in Mumbai, close set doors, peeling plaster, leaking pipes, rotting garbage and a pungent feel in a residential building would have been unsurprising, in Hong Kong it seemed incongruent with the vision one has watching the Symphony of Lights show from the Star Ferry deck.
What’s earth shattering about it you ask?
....On the previous day, if you had happened to stretch and moan in Nike pants and Adidas headband in a swnaky yoga gym in LKF, walked down the escalator cursing Donald Tsang for not making the streets air conditioned, stopped at MIX for orange juice, spent ten endless minutes in the MTR, flashed an empty smile at the effusive security guy, took two minutes to whizz up to your flat, walked into a clean apartment and sipped tea watching the day fade, you may get the hang of it.
....A woman from far inside the room that I was suspiciously eyeing waved to me. It was Lai Shan.
Lai Shan sat hunched in a blood red tunic and frayed jeans, yapping in Mandarin with anxious men and women around.
It was a bedlam! Small kids were running around. Toddlers were screaming their hearts out for mothers crowding around Lai Shan. A young boy was engrossed in playing the piano. In another corner a bored teenager sat with his mouth open watching his father getting a hair cut.
I sat in a corner looking at this slice of life that could have been plucked from anywhere in the world except for the culture, language, physical features and eating habits of its people which made it unique.
Last week I returned to Sham Shui Po to begin my stint as a volunteer to help kids with their english homework. There were no niceties and no introductions.
I walked in and got down to help right away. My first student that day was Vivian, a Chinese girl. She was quite good and except for a few mistakes her homework did not need much correction.
While checking her homework was easy, explaining to her why ‘been’ will be used with ‘had’ in a particular sentence was tough.
Lesson of the day-teaching is not a cakewalk but one of the toughest, most challenging and formidable jobs. To be entrusted with 25-30 kids who depend on you for what they learn, understand and take away in the name of school education is one hell of a responsibility.
I could not explain a lot of things to Vivian. She also had difficulty understanding my Indian accent I think.
I also met this cute and very naughty Pakistani kid who wanted to take me home. He would barge in from time to time and demand, I converse with the ladki in cheeni.
When classes ended, a woman came up to me, held my hands and thanked me. She was Vivian’s mother.
I was touched. Like the scholarship I got in my graduate years, her smile is a treasure I would always be fiercely proud of and happy to have earned.
Reading through what I have written, I realise, all of it might not be making sense. But everything written here has come out the way I saw and felt it.
It was a facet of life that I had never met in my day to day life.
PS:
When I am asked if I like Hong Kong, I usually break into a Mumbai vs. Hong Kong monologue.
Hong Kong may be strides ahead when it comes to infrastructure and amenities but in terms of social security and tackling social issues like poverty, I do not see any difference here.
In Mumbai or for that matter anywhere in India, poverty and squalor are in your face.
While it hits you as an unending sea of sequestered thatched and tin settlements when the plane descends at the Mumbai airport, in Hong Kong you have to pull yourself away from the fireworks and walk the less trodden ways to see it.
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