Even traveling 45 miles per hour with all the taxi's windows down, it was still so hot and dusty that my British friend and I felt as though we could not get enough air. However, India was not the dry, desert-like expanse that I had pictured. Certainly India has its arid areas, but great portions of the country are humid and wet. During my stay I saw beautiful seaports, green fertile valleys, thick forests and jungles, mountains that glittered with the reflection of their vast mineral wealth. The countryside we traveled through was far from dry. Rice field followed rice field, and there were many watering holes — usually filled with cows cooling their sacred hides.

At midmorning we decided to stop for a little refreshment, and the cab driver pulled off the highway by a little shanty cafe. By this time my hunger had overcome my lack of enthusiasm for Indian dishwashing. Rodney, undaunted as ever, ordered some fried eggs. I optimistically thought that eggs fried in a hot skillet — albeit it dirty — would not do much harm, so I put my order in. Since the coffee was boiling hot, I consented to have some of it as well.

After letting them cool a bit, I ravenously consumed a yellow spoonful of eggs. A feeling like liquid fire spread from my tongue to the roof of my mouth and clear back to my larynx. It spread from my throat into my esophagus and stomach. My eyes watered. My nose ran. I tried to swallow, but I could not. I looked at the swarthy, beady-eyed driver, then at the proprietor of the shanty, and for a fleeting moment I imagined a criminal conspiracy between them. I pictured the authorities finding my poisoned, pain-contorted body in a rice paddy a few days later, stripped of identification, passport, camera, and cash.

Then, through a blurry film, I saw Rodney wolfing down his eggs like they were milk chocolate. Maybe what I had taken for British bravado was only his true affection for this land and its traits.

I believed that I had stumbled onto the reason why almost all the food in India is intolerably hot, for as famished as I was, that one bite was more than enough for me that morning. Suddenly I had no more hunger. But it was no longer fear of dirty utensils that killed my desire to eat, for I figured that few germs could have survived the heat of the little red infernos the Indians call peppers. Growing up in south Louisiana, I had often eaten spicy and hot food, but those Indian peppers are indistinguishable from glowing embers of lava. Only the English could have colonized this place, I thought, for only they, like Rodney, had the stomach for it.

Near the shanty where we ate were hordes of small children. A number of them had deformities such as full or partial blindness and amputated limbs. The cab driver told me that many parents purposely mutilate their own children to increase their intake from begging.

As we drove on, I found the poverty of New Delhi duplicated in the countryside. We passed many settlements teeming with rag-swathed, skeleton people. Children were starving everywhere. Cruel, open sores spotted their bodies, and the unrelenting flies swarmed the children to feast on their festering wounds.

The probable first impulse of any Westerner who learns of India's plight is to send money and food. But by sending such assistance, he actually only compounds the agony. The reason that so many Indians are starving is their chronically high birth rate combined with their low ability rate. The resulting overpopulation outstrips the ability of the people to feed themselves. Unless the givers tie aid to absolute guarantees of population control, the increased food simply feeds another reproducing generation that in turn only multiples the problem. Despite this self-evident fact, Western nations have poured seemingly unending food and medical supplies into India. The purpose of the relief at its start early in this century was to help the thousands who were starving. Paradoxically, because of our generosity we can now report that tens of millions starve in India. The sunken faces of the malnourished, sick, and mutilated children around the nation are the results of misplaced humanitarianism that has only increased human suffering and death.