India in 1974 and now – from my experience

My very first visit to India was in October/November 1974. India has changed a lot since then. Here, I want to focus only on one point: on food.
During my internship with Lufthansa, when I had the chance to take flights for very little money, I had visited many countries, but not India. Once, on my way to Bangkok, I looked down on India and somehow had the strange feeling that the ground is not solid there. Actually, it was true. Indian Vedanta says, that the ground is indeed not solid, but that we live in a kind of dream or maya. But most probably I was afraid to visit India, because I had seen several documentaries on German TV which showed India as an extremely poor country where people still starve.
Yet in 1974, when I got once more a cheap ticket, because I had jobbed at LH during my university holidays, I finally went. I landed in Mumbai and then went to Goa by boat, like so many foreigners at that time. After a few weeks, I crossed over to Puducherry by train.

In Mumbai I had an experience, I will never forget.
I stayed in a small hotel in Colaba and walked around the area. Near the railway station, there was an underground passage for pedestrians, which I took. There, in a corner, a young man was sitting on the floor, his knees pulled up, one arm loosely stretched out over one knee, with an open palm. He was only skin and bones. I never had seen anyone who looked so starved. And then his eyes met mine. It touched my core. Even now, tears come to my eyes when I think of it. I wanted to give him something, but I allowed myself to be pushed on, not finding my purse easily. But what could I have given him? He seemed reconciled to his fate, calm, just looked…

Then, in Goa, another incident, which I never forgot.
I was friendly with a Swedish woman. Once she asked me to come with her to the village chemist shop. The shop was full of very thin Indians. The chemist called over their heads out to us, what we wanted. Then only I realised what she had come for. She wanted pills which curb her appetite, so that she won’t eat so much. I felt terribly embarrassed. Luckily, the chemist did not understand what she wanted, even though she tried hard to explain it. I tried to discourage her from further explaining. Anyway, he surely would not have such pills.

Fast forward to 2025. What incredible change! Now ads are everywhere, how to lose weight, and someone asking for pills which curb one’s appetite is not an embarrassment any longer but rather common.
Yet is it really an improvement? The junk food and obesity explosion are concerning. Now, all village shops are heavily stocked with shiny packets of chips. Small children pester their parents for chips and get them. Sugary drinks are common. Physical and mental health suffer due to this.

In Germany, when the big food corporation pushed in Maggi and other junk food in the 1960s/70s, I sometimes heard the view, that Germans were healthier right after WW2, when they lived only on potatoes and worked hard to clear the rubble from the massive, allied bombings, than they are now.
Is it similar in Bharat?

by Maria Wirth