First night stay in a village:

Off we went one evening to a far away village (25 km, about 12 miles) to spend the night. It was Tanvi and the doctor (vetenarian) and Pankaj and I. It was the most I’ve ridden on a bike (the trip took us about an hour). On the way the trusty, albeit sometimes confused, guide showed me places where riots and all had taken place.
Aside on the caste issue in the region: There are two castes in the region that have been fighting for some time now. They are the Meenas and the Gujjars. The Meenas are put in the lower group (scheduled tribes) and therefore they have more reserved seats (think affirmative action) in high positions in the government. The Gujjars have been fighting for a position in the lower grouping so they get more reservations as well. For that they do things like stop buses, cars and people from entering villages and generally disrupting everyday people’s lives. I thought it was fascinating that a group was fighting for a LOWER position in society, it gives a glimpse of what affirmative action has done here. For more information, there have been some more Gujjar strikes in Rajasthan in the past couple days (look at Indian news websites for more info, or just google it). For example, right now our town is cut off from main cities nearby because the police have stopped all buses and trains to prevent large groups of Gujjars from meeting in any one place. Yesterday the rumor was that 75 people were killed somewhere in the area. No worries though, we are only allowed to go to non-Gujjar majority villages, which is not good for our “random sampling”.
So we passed through villages where the milk vans for the org I work for had been stopped and the driver had been beaten up. The next day the milk van had gone through its route with police protection. It was interesting because the village we visited was mainly Rajputs (olden royalty? But very poor nonetheless). They are a very proud caste which does not like their women to work outside the house.
Once we got to the village, lots of kids came to the main woman’s house.
Aside on the organization: Srijan has started groups in villages of about 10-15 women who save money, buy buffaloes, collect milk and sell it to the town where we are living (the headquarters). So we are surveying women from a sample of villages who are part of the groups and who are not to see what the health differences are.
Each village has a main woman, whose house we were going to stay at. The village was called Toda Ka Gothra. Once we got there, lots of kids came over to see us. Pankaj told them we were there to vaccinate them at which they were terrified and refused to talk to us. Then about 6-7 women came for a meeting and we explained why we were there. One of them thought we were school teachers. They also brought us tea with goat milk in it, which was really delicious. Next stop: camel milk!
There was a little bit of confusion and we spent a couple hours looking at buffaloes, checking their health, sampling the milk fat and looking at newly born calves. I’ve learnt a lot about this type of livelihood and learnt how important one buffalo and her health is for the entire family. Not to mention the baby buffaloes are SO CUTE!! By the time we came back it was pretty late and all the women (which we wanted to talk to) were cooking/feeding/eating. So we rested at the main persons house (Mohankanwarji) and played with the children who had come there. Everytime I saw a lady with a small baby I made a mental note to talk to her – since our sample is only women with children under 5.
The meal we had consisted of achar (raw mango marinated in spices, oil and chili powder), fresh rotis (bread – so good) and kadhi (a liquid lentil soup usually eaten with rice). All of this was cooked on a stove which used cow dung as its fuel. But my god the rotis were amazing! My main problem so far has been that I usually have one bite and am ready to die…the food is incredibly spicy. I usually try to hide it (for an unsuccessful experience – read dhaba entry). But once again, everyone knew by the end that it was really spicy for me. To make things better they brought out fresh buttermilk (once again, amazingly delicious) and put lots of sugar in it. That’s something I’ve seen everywhere here, they really go out of the way to make sure you are comfortable. During the meal, we were directly asked (again): So what caste are you? I hate being put on the spot like this. It usually doesn’t make a difference but they are always curious. Pankaj had said he usually says whatever comes to his mind but oftentimes when he says a lower caste name they treat him a little differently. This time we politely explained that where we come from there are no castes and everyone is on a equal footing. Because they thought we were from Bombay and Chennai they let it go and said something about things being different in the cities.
After the men were banished out of house, Mohankanwarji declared that we were like her daughters for the night and that if we were scared at any point or anything to tell her. What we would be afraid of I’m not sure but she made that very clear. We set up cots made of rope outside. At this point I looked up and realized that I had never seen the sky that amazing. There were at least 10 times more stars there than anywhere else I’ve been. Its then that it hit me, here I am sitting in a mud house (fairly big, but still), with no electricity, no cell phone service, with a cow tied to the front door. I had not felt content like that in a long time. I had already figured out that I need less sleep here ( I sleep at midnight and wake up by 5:30). Sitting there made me realize that this place was really clean, no noise, no pollution, and people were leading very simple lives in which small things made them happy.
Just as I was relishing the moment, out of nowhere a sand storm started. Let me tell you, when visibility suddenly becomes zero it is very frightening. So we picked up the cots and ran into a room where there was room only for three cots. Once we were settled we realized it was raining outside. While it isn’t the rainy season here there are random small bouts of rain that last for a bit and then stop. So we sat for a bit listening to the rain. Mohankanwarji (who loved to talk) kept us up late into the night talking about the village, her children, her buffaloes and the milk they produce. We were all falling asleep when we finally went to our respective cots and that is when I fell asleep immediately (to wake up about four hours later with loud cock-o-doodle-dos outside our door, which lasted about 3 hours. We went out to find Mohankanwarji cooking cleaning already (it was about 5:30).
Early morning is a very beautiful time in the village. It was slightly cold and there were sounds of people slowly waking up. After two cups of tea, one from the neighboring house who said they HAVE to feed the visitors, we headed out to the first house, the woman who would take us to other houses to meet mothers of small children.
We got 5 interviews done in a couple hours, in each house giving a cup of tea and then because we said we’d had a lot of tea we got a large glass of fresh milk and some watermelon. In each house everyone came to see us even though our questions were only for the women. Therefore in some houses, the husbands were there and probably affected the way the women answered our questions. In one house a woman brought her small child and asked us to look at it because he had an eye infection. We explained that we have no medical training and that she should go to the town (which is far away) to a real doctor. Another house thought we were UNICEF workers and wanted to know what we were going to bring to the village. Since this is just a preliminary assessment, it was really depressing to tell them that we ourselves wouldn’t be bringing anything but would pass on their concerns/problems/health conditions to the appropriate people. We kept being called Sister (what they call nurses), Doctor Sahiba (Doctor Madam), etc.
In the middle of the interviews we found out that there was a death in the village. A thirteen year old boy had fell off a tree while visiting a nearby village. At that point there was no one from the Rajput caste in the village since everyone went there. But people from other castes were still in the village so we switched to their houses.
Because the doctor and Pankaj had to be back for a meeting, we started back soon and arrived a bit tired and sleepy back to Dunni (our town). After showering both of us passed out due to exhaustion – not because we didn’t sleep enough but because the surveys were very draining, trying to understand everything that was being said.
And that was the first night we spent in the village, there will be many more to come…