Our room basically self-destructed in our absence. We stepped inside to be instantly entangled in the cob webs that filled the whole space, and found that ants had eaten away so much of the brick in the walls that there were piles of red dust all over. It was as though the walls and the ceiling had begun to close in on themselves by decomposing into dust. Spiders the size of my hand skittered across the walls, and as they receded into their respective caves, we realized again how porous those walls really are There was no electricity, so we cleaned out the humid, dark place with the help of our extremely eager ten-year-old neighbor, who was so excited about our return that she went into a frenzy of haphazard sweeping and scrubbing. Hours later, we realized where the wire was disconnected and were able to fix it. The ceiling fan whirred to life and the light blinked on.
In spite of the initial shock of our room, however, we were warmly welcomed back into the community. As word spread about our return, people came from all over the neighborhood and crowded around our doorway to see us. “Where were you?” many of them said. “We expected you two days ago!” We had never expected that people would remember the exact date of the train we had told them about three months before! Our landlady had thoughtfully filled several buckets of water for us and stored them under her bed, so even though we had missed water distribution for the day, we were able to do some laundry and bathe in addition to wiping down every dusty surface in our room.
Over the past few days, we’ve been easing back into the routines of daily life: cooking, doing laundry, buying vegetables at the market, drinking chai with friends. We’ve been busy making the rounds to visit everyone we’ve gotten to know over the past few months, but it will probably take several days more to see them all. There’s a diverse mix of emotions during all of this transition. We’ve felt stressed out by the constant stream of visitors, and the ebb and flow of children at our window and at our door, staring at us while we wash our dishes and brush our teeth and make our coffee, and coming to tell us that their aunt or grandma or father is “calling us” (which means, “Drop what you’re doing now and go see them!”). We’ve been happy to catch up with friends, to see that babies who were underweight newborns when we left are plump and healthy, homes that were under construction are finished, and the row of the bamboo and plastic homes that we worried might have to be torn down to make room for a sanitation improvement project are still standing. But monsoon is a messy season, so it’s also been sobering to see the muddy filth that many of our neighbors have to endure during these rainy months when the dirt paths turn to sludge and the rising drainage canal threatens to enter their homes. Their homes make our room seem like a sanctuary of order and cleanliness. Rain means that temperatures are lower than they were during the hot season, but most of the time the humidity more than makes up for those few degrees in sweat and heat rash.
I think seeing the conditions everyone is living in now, coming straight from America instead of after 6 months wandering around India and seeing all kinds of different slums, puts everything in more stark relief than I saw it before. Where I grew up and where I live now are different worlds for sure, but out of the two, this seems to be the one that’s more real. No A/C to shelter us from the elements, no trash collection service to disguise how much waste we’re actually generating, no separation to distract us from the poverty that most of the world lives in. When you consider the fact that more than 80% of the world’s population lives in the 100 countries that make up the developing world, and that only 15% live in developed countries like the U.S. and Europe, it becomes clear that as challenging as it is for the two of us to try to adjust to life in India, these realities are more representative of the universal human experience than the comforts of our home country are.
In spite of the initial shock of our room, however, we were warmly welcomed back into the community. As word spread about our return, people came from all over the neighborhood and crowded around our doorway to see us. “Where were you?” many of them said. “We expected you two days ago!” We had never expected that people would remember the exact date of the train we had told them about three months before! Our landlady had thoughtfully filled several buckets of water for us and stored them under her bed, so even though we had missed water distribution for the day, we were able to do some laundry and bathe in addition to wiping down every dusty surface in our room.
Over the past few days, we’ve been easing back into the routines of daily life: cooking, doing laundry, buying vegetables at the market, drinking chai with friends. We’ve been busy making the rounds to visit everyone we’ve gotten to know over the past few months, but it will probably take several days more to see them all. There’s a diverse mix of emotions during all of this transition. We’ve felt stressed out by the constant stream of visitors, and the ebb and flow of children at our window and at our door, staring at us while we wash our dishes and brush our teeth and make our coffee, and coming to tell us that their aunt or grandma or father is “calling us” (which means, “Drop what you’re doing now and go see them!”). We’ve been happy to catch up with friends, to see that babies who were underweight newborns when we left are plump and healthy, homes that were under construction are finished, and the row of the bamboo and plastic homes that we worried might have to be torn down to make room for a sanitation improvement project are still standing. But monsoon is a messy season, so it’s also been sobering to see the muddy filth that many of our neighbors have to endure during these rainy months when the dirt paths turn to sludge and the rising drainage canal threatens to enter their homes. Their homes make our room seem like a sanctuary of order and cleanliness. Rain means that temperatures are lower than they were during the hot season, but most of the time the humidity more than makes up for those few degrees in sweat and heat rash.
I think seeing the conditions everyone is living in now, coming straight from America instead of after 6 months wandering around India and seeing all kinds of different slums, puts everything in more stark relief than I saw it before. Where I grew up and where I live now are different worlds for sure, but out of the two, this seems to be the one that’s more real. No A/C to shelter us from the elements, no trash collection service to disguise how much waste we’re actually generating, no separation to distract us from the poverty that most of the world lives in. When you consider the fact that more than 80% of the world’s population lives in the 100 countries that make up the developing world, and that only 15% live in developed countries like the U.S. and Europe, it becomes clear that as challenging as it is for the two of us to try to adjust to life in India, these realities are more representative of the universal human experience than the comforts of our home country are.
