Cambodia Diaries: Phoenix from the flames

September 09, 2006:

As Cambodia celebrates Pchumban for a week, Achan arrives tonight for a 2 week vacation in India. I still hold my memories of life in Phnom Penh- some loving, some that I'd want to forget. The following three posts are from my initial days in Kampuchea. Read on.

It’s a strange country inhabited by alien people following their alien customs, speaking a language that seems impossible to decipher and relishing food that to me seems anything but edible. I am in Phnom Penh, the capital of a once-communist and now unfortunate Cambodia. I am sitting on a recliner in a two-storied villa watching Kampuchea arise from the dead. The process to most of us symbolises a failed battle against human betrayal. But to them it’s a die hard way of life. If not peace there is definitely acceptance in the minds of the people amidst all this economic turmoil and moral chaos.

As I cosy myself up in my recliner wondering if I can make it in this country, I see my answer right in front of me. At first sight, she is a young mother with a little child in tow, poverty seething through her bones. A scavenger- if her clothes have seen better days, it was definitely not while she owned them. A frayed straw hat, not very different from a wad of wet napkins, sits in its place- a little awkwardly, but doing its job nevertheless. Perhaps the only protection she has ever known. As she rummages through the garbage cans I see more...she exemplifies hope and survival.

Half asleep in my recliner, housed comfortably in a double storied mammoth of a bungalow and a maid fixing my dinner for the night- my heart reaches out to thank the woman. But for what ? My conscious mind is still trying to figure that one out. A few possibilities surface but I can never be sure. Maybe it’s because she gave me the promise of survival that I so needed. If someone like her with absolutely nothing in the world to boot for save for a lifetime of misery can find something, even something as menial as rag picking, to do in this place, what could possibly be in store for someone like me. Someone with a university degree, an expensive roof over the head and a far reaching phone book.

Or is it because she reinforced the expansive existence of mindless poverty in the third world countries which gives some of the developed nations a sadistic pleasure at the very prospect of getting to play God and having the ‘poor and uncivilized’ live a parasitic life eating out of their scheming hands? Could it have been a case of possible guilt attack? Was I right on my part to live a next to extravagant life in Her own land while She scavenged away? Or it could have been my genuine interest towards improving the lives of the not so fortunate ones and help them find meaning and worth in their lives. Just what is it that made me tug at the cord that connected our hearts for that one minute I shall never know. Until then its back to my life in the cosy recliner.

Dated June 25, 2002