My daily life in the village begins with the morning call of azaan. I wait for the call to get over and go back to sleep again till the milkman knocks at my door. I have temporarily shifted to a village in the deltaic area of Cauvery river in Tamil Nadu, for fieldwork. I have rented out a house in a village near my study village. With basic kitchen amenities and fewer things to clean and maintain, life is simple. Most of my acquaintances were concerned about the facilities I might miss staying in a village. Having stayed for a couple of months now, I feel as long as I am connected through the internet and have electricity I am sane. Post-Cyclone Gaja due to power outage and intermittent to nil mobile network, I experienced the primitive for two days.
The new house which I will be calling my home for the coming few months found me after several failed attempts to find one myself. My field support – Barath – and I were on a house search mission for a few days. During this house hunting period we met several people, called up a few and were assured by yet another set that they will find a house for me. I was hopeful and optimist about their assurance and waited. Nothing worked out. After work each day we would go check out a house or two. A village office staff from one of my study villages was helping us out in this search for some time. None of the house we visited suited me. Either the villagers were sceptical to rent out to an outsider in particular to a woman or the location of the house was not appropriate for me.
Getting a house nearby was important for me since the drive from the guesthouse to the village was getting on my nerves. When I began driving long distances each day it felt liberating. Challenging situations on road and handling erratic drivers was adding on to my driving experience. However, with time it lost its charm. Slowly, I was bored, tired and nearly escaped crashing with those erratic drivers. So we continued the house search with much fervor. One of the field days, we visited the village office for some work. After discussions, the staff at the office asked me whether I found any house. We ranted about our house hunt story. On the bench outside, a group of people started discussing the available options for me. Following an animated discussion, one of them got up and told: “Come, I will show you a house”. Out of the blue, we fixed the house within an hour. It appears that the building took longer than expected to be constructed and the first tenant occupied one of the houses just a week before I moved in. I joke around now that it took so long to match my timeline.
I do not know whom to blame (or not) in my life in the city about my low social awareness index. I do not know many of the neighbours in my street nor do they know me. We are all too busy in our daily routine and struggles that we do not socialize enough. We are too tired and perhaps therefore disinterested to do so. In the village, to my pleasant surprise, people knew each other and even their family histories. A combination of factors supports this bond. Primarily, I believe it is because they don’t go to different offices on separate paths.
I am more involved with my neighbours in the village. I am sure I will miss them dearly once fieldwork is over. My relation with my neighbour aunty developed over conversations through the kitchen window. Similar to the movie Lunchbox in which Nimrat Kaur keeps up her relationship with her neighbour upstairs through the kitchen window. There has been a conversation for each whistle from the pressure cooker in my kitchen and many more. The fun part of these talks is that she speaks in Tamil and I speak back in a mix of Malayalam, Kannada and eventually some Tamil. Sometimes even I get confused about the meaning of the sentences that come out of my mouth. She understands. She even cared for me when I was very ill and was misdiagnosed with malaria.
Being an outsider in the village and a woman who drives, I am always watched. I am a mini-sensation, I assume. First, when my husband came to visit me, I was asked who that man is. After a month when my parents came to visit me my father was interviewed by the lady at the tea stall when he went to buy some idlis for breakfast. I had myself never visited the tea stall but she had been observing me. My father struggled to answer back in Tamil. Nevertheless few men sitting there helped him out, they knew all the answers. One day when Barath’s bike tyre was punctured he took a lift from a person unknown to him on the road to reach the village I stay in. The bike rider told him “Tyre of your madam’s car is punctured”. Barath was surprised and indeed the car tyre was punctured. In another instance, there was a group discussion - over where to park my car - amongst people standing outside the shops located opposite to my building. That day it was predicted that Cycone Gaja would make landfall in the late evening. After work that day (under the darkening sky), Barath and I stepped out of the car and were looking at the tamarind tree under which I generally park the car. Looking at us the people started discussing a potential parking place. That night it rained heavily. I stayed awake imagining that it would flood inside the house and revised the bare minimum swimming I knew. Gusting winds and howling sound robbed me of my sleep for the most part. Thankfully both car and I are safe. I found out from others the next day that several trees had fallen and electric posts destroyed. The mighty tamarind tree didn’t fall. The roof and some parts of the tea shop just next to my building stood half broken with a tree fallen over it. Although power bank recharged my mobile, it was rendered useless without mobile network. I couldn’t cook without electricity since I don’t have the stove –gas cylinder combo. My neighbour aunty again helped me sail through this. Amidst all this, I was still determined I will stay back and continue with the work. Barath said it was impossible, I argued. We went to the village office to know the extent of the damage. Several people poured in to brief about the damage as were sitting and speaking with the officer. We were advised to halt the work for some days otherwise villagers would assume we have come to provide cyclone relief. Power outage continued for long. And I decided to come back to Bangalore for good.
