Moving On
When we left for Mayali on April 21st, we had the task of rescouting all the villages in Hilongard watershed, re-selecting 5 communities based on our new criteria, and most importantly – completing microplans (and associated tasks) in two villages. For all this, we had a tentative deadline of May 20th, something that, while certainly not easy, didn’t seem impossible. While we blazed through scouting and selection in only 5 days, by the time May 20th rolled around we hadn’t finished either of the two plans, and even our revised target of May 25th didn’t happen. However, the end is now in sight, we’ve finished work in Makhet (last meeting was today) and tomorrow will wrap up the microplan in Mamani, leaving only a few more days of odd-jobs before we’re done. The new deadline is June 5th (a full 6.5 weeks after we arrived), but it looks like Hiralal and I are going to be heading back on the 2nd to start the documentation/detailed analysis work that has been piling up. Given the way things have been going lately with our work here (not well), and the fact I’ve been completely out of touch with the world for 5 weeks, I’ve long been looking forward to the day when I can escape and go back to Dehradun. With that date now fixed, I’m feeling a lot better and happier.
I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen when I get back to Dehradun, my short terms plans are uncertain at best. As I’ve said, I’m hoping to be able to call it quits at PSI early (June 16th) and go up to Mussoorie to take part in an intriguing workshop being organized by SIDH (the people whose calendar I designed back in November while I was learning Hindi). However, in previous discussions with Debashish, I’d told him I’d stay with PSI until the end of June, and given the amount of work (especially documenting this mess of stuff we’ve done here in the field lately), I don’t think he’s going to be too keen on me skipping out early. In the end though, I’m only a volunteer here at PSI and so have a lot more power to set my own schedule, and the way I’m feeling now, it’d take a miracle/horrid disaster to make me stay with PSI. It’s not the way I’d like to leave the organization after working here for 5 months, but I don’t see anything changing anytime soon, and I’m not going to wait around for them anymore.
However, whatever happens (I leave early or stay til July), I’m pretty sure that this is my last time in Mayali (unless I end up doing the Char Daam, and then perhaps I’ll whizz through on one of those yatri busses – on second thought, knowing the condition of that road & those busses, maybe not). To mark this change in my life, I feel like I should try to sum up my time here in Mayali, what I’ve done, what I’ve felt, what I’ve learned etc., but I know that I can’t do that. This experience has just been so diverse that it can’t be summarized, and as I’ve eluded to at times, I think there are parts of it that I won’t fully absorb/understand until much later.
Tonight was one of those times, I’d been passing time playing Civ III (my only form of escapism here as I can’t do any more website design at this point without an internet connection and I’ve read all the English language material (worth reading) that’s available within 25km) but after awhile got fed up with it and so took advantage of the beautiful evening weather to go up and just wander around the bazaar. Looking around at it, the place I’ve come to call home for the majority of the past 5 months, I felt a real connection with the place, and felt that it was full of magic. The fading glow of sunset was bathing everything in a beautiful orange glow, but most of the little shops/houses had a lightbulb dangling from the ceiling, acting as tiny (rustic) spotlights for the cast of people hanging out, chatting about the day, the price of vegetables or whatever else came to mind. Those who weren’t in the shops were out on the street, parents strolling with kids in tow, boys walking up the street, laughing and carrying on, arms draped over eachothers’ shoulders (many westerns likely assume that most Indian boys are gay, but the truth is that friendship is much stronger here and physical contact is normal – maybe because there are such strict social taboos again men and women interacting in public) and sadhus (the grubby, otherworldly holy-men on pilgrimage, walking from their villages all over India to the sacred mountain temples with a small blanket and metal tiffin as their only luggage) wandering into town after a long day on the road. Someone had their speaker-system on and was playing the soundtrack from some recent Hindi film, but the volume had been turned down so rather than drowning out life (as it usually does), it acted as the perfect background music for the show unfolding before my eyes. Mayali itself seemed cleaner than usual, there was only minor amounts of trash collected in the gutters along the road and the vehicles (taxis, jeeps, trucks and busses) had been parked neatly with care. It was a place in peace
It was a truly amazing experience, and I just stood in the middle of the road slowly gazing around, soaking it all up. I felt like a child discovering a new world in their backyard – something I was so familiar with had suddenly bloomed, exposing a new face to the world – one I’d seen hinted at in pieces before, but never all at once like this. It was truly magical, and something I will remember for a long time.
Mayali has certainly left its mark on me, but I’ve left my mark on Mayali too. In the physical sense, my bootprint is stamped into the landing going down to our room (it was poured yesterday and hadn’t quite dried by the time I came back exhausted from mapping Makhet so in plodding down the stairs, I jumped the last step and landed solidly on the semi-solid concrete) and in the mental sense, I am firmly fixed in the minds of all the locals I met/talked to, and even those who just saw me from afar (everyone knows me here, and if they overcome their shyness, come up to me and tell me exactly where/when the met me and ask if I remember them – unfortunately I usually don’t). As for Mayali’s impact on me, I’m a little slimmer and in better shape than when I started (a consequence of eating only simple – but healthy – rice, dal, roti and subjee, and hiking up and down the mountainside every day to visit the villages), and I’ve come to appreciate the simplicity (not to be confused with ease) of rural mountain life – particularly the way the people peacefully accept it (whether they like it or not).
Seeing the women working stoically day-in and day-out (be it carrying 50kg of wood from the jungle 10km away, weeding the fields, manually threshing the wheat or doing any of the multitude of house-chores they are tasked with), and seeing the men – sometimes toiling away at daily labour (be it shoveling rubble/scree, breaking boulders into gravel with little hammers, driving oxen and plough in each of their little tiny terraced fields, building buildings etc), sometimes lounging around (gambling in the shade of a tree next to the little local temple, smoking bidis and chatting over chai at the local tea shack) and sometimes just wandering along the mountain paths/roads (the grandfathers ambling along empty roads in their white kurtas, “Nehru cap” on head and walking stick in hand, sometimes herding goats and sometimes just “passing time”), everyone seems to contentedly accept their lot when a North American would complain of boredom, excessive work or lack of resources. Makes me wonder about our lifestyle – spending so much of our time working hard so we can earn money to spend entertaining ourselves in our limited free time – always doing something and never pausing for a minute to stop and just let the world unfold in its own way. There’s a lot to think about here, and for this reason – the chance to get out here and experience this world first-hand, I think the past 5 months have “been worth it” despite all the challenges associated with the work.
With all this in mind, I’ll try to make the most of my last two days here, and at the same time, mentally prepare myself for my arrival back in Dehradun and the associated culture-shock of re-emersing myself in the chaos that is most of India. I know I’m going to miss Garwhal, this is a special little region in the massive agglomeration that is India, but for now, I’m counting down the hours til I’m back in Dehradun.
This is the online home of one Shane Warner, my place to attempt to tell some of my stories, as well as just spout off whatever comes to mind.
