Sublimity…

I realized today that I’ve been working with PSI for one month now, adn yet I haven’t posted anything about what I’m doing and what it feels like. In typical me fashion, I’ve started some posts, but every time I get to the important parts, there suddenly is too much to say and I never seem to get around to finishing it. One of these days (hopefully soon) it’ll happen, it’s now a priority for me, but right now I’ve got something else to talk about that is sort of related – the normal events of day-to-day life here in Mayali. Up until we moved into our own rooms and started cooking for ourselves, there wasn’t really a well established routine as we were constantly moving around (between Mayali and Dehradun) doing different things each day. Over the last week we’ve been here though, I have started to notice some similarities between the days, and thought I could/should write about it. Here’s the general flow of life here:

• 5:30am – Get woken up when our downstairs neighbours wake up and turn their ghettoblaster up to full volume, blaring Garhwali songs for all of Mayali to hear. I curse Indian’s lack of awarneness of the needs of others, roll over and try to go back to sleep.
• 6:00am – The music (still blaring) is joined by the barking of all the stray dogs in Mayali (at least 10). Whoever called these beasts “Man’s best friend” was sorely mistaken.
• 7:00am – Wake up again when Sunil and Bendari get up, turn the lights on and start taking baths, brushing their teeth (a process which sounds more like they’re trying to make themselves puke), washing clothes and whatever hygene activities that they do (daily, always early morning). Again I roll over and hide my face under my sleeping bag and go back to sleep.
• 7:30am – The chai pot goes on the stove, but since we haven’t been able to get more than one glass of milk a day (always in the afternoon), there’s never any milk so we can’t make chai proper, just black tea (with lots of sugar) and sometimes a bit of lime thrown in (not chai, but not bad).
• 7:45am – Wake up for real when Sunil hands me my steaming steel cup of tea. It’s a good challenge to help wake me up, trying to steadily hold a very hot cup of very hot tea without spilling it or burning myself, but being served tea in bed every morning is pretty nice.
• 8:00am – Get up and put on my clothes. Compared to the 1+ hrs it takes everyone else to get ready in the morning, I’m ready to go in 10 minutes.
• 8:10am – Sunil (always trying to get eveyone ready to go at a decent hour) starts inspecting the breakfast rice (picking out the bugs, stones and other junk mixed in with the grains). I pull out my computer and start writing entries.
• 8:30am – Supna and Bimla show up saying goodmorning. Bimla goes to help make breakfast while Supna disappears back to their room.
• 9:30am – Breakfast (rice and dhal, sometimes cooked together as “kitcherdi”) is ready. Everyone grabs a thali (metal plate with tall sides) and lacking spoons, we dig in with our hands (in typical Indian fashion). I try not to burn my fingers on the hot rice & dhal, but by this point I’m really hungry, so it’s hard (I’m used to eating breakfast right after waking up). As for the type of food, I’ve got to admit that despite initial hesitations, kitcherdi for breakfast hasn’t been that bad – it’s not ideal, but certainly doable.
• 10:00am – Finish breakfast and wash plates & pots.
• 10:15am – Get packed up for the day and then lock up the rooms and head up to the bazaar to catch a bus/jeep to where ever we’re going that day (doing microplanning exercises in Banoli or scouting villages in the rest of the watershed).
• 2:00pm to 5:30 – Return from whatever we were doing (time depends on what & where we were). Get/make tea and spend the afternoon relaxing.
• 6:00pm – start making supper, inspecting rice and dhal, peeling & cutting vegetable and making roti dough.
• 7:30pm – Eat supper
• 8:00pm – Clean up after supper and get settled for the evening.
• 8:30pm – Start our evening meeting in which we debreif from the day’s activities and plan the next day, what we’re going to do and how to do it.
• 9:30pm – Wrap up the meeting as people start falling asleep. Usually get enough sorted out to be able to get through the next day, but don’t usually have enough time to talk through everything that could/should be sorted out. Supna and Bimla head off to their room.
• 9:45pm – Bendari falls asleep, blanket over his head to block the light, while Sunil and I stay up for ahwile discussing the day, the project, and life in general.
• 10:15pm – Sunil goes to sleep and I get up to brush my teeth and get ready for bed. Turn the light out, but usually stay up for awhile either listening to my iPod or writing entries on computer.
• 11:00pm – Finallly get tired and go to sleep.

Though it isn’t really my ideal schedule, I’m starting to get used to it, and now it doesn’t feel that bad. In a way, it’s nice to have some sort of regularity to life, a little comfort in knowing what to expect for at least part of the time in a life/place where you never know what’s going to happen next.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 8th, 2006 at 9:27 am and is filed under India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.