The Road to Rural Haryana (Field Visit, Part I)

A street on the edge of a village in the north Indian state of Haryana

Where do I even begin...

Well, at the beginning, I suppose.

I woke up on the morning of Monday, June 16th, as per usual for my life here in India. That means at a little after 6:00 AM, my circadian rhythms start chirping away in Hindi and I'm awake, alarm or not.

I did a little reading, a little Duolingo, a little catching up on news from the U.S. and from family and friends. I washed up, showered, shaved, and somehow whittled the time away until 8:30 came around. Unlike usual, all I brought with me from my flat-let today was my water bottle and my notebook---my computer stayed set at my desk. I also put on Elmo socks and close-toed shoes for the first time since my arrival in India 10 days prior.

Today was my first field visit, the first time I'd get to see the work I'd been doing in the office the entire week before be put into action, the first time I'd get to see the lives of those I was working to improve from their own perspective, the first time I'd get to see what this entire internship is truly about.

Breakfast was phenomenal, as per usual, and after eating with all my friends, I filled up my water bottle from the spigot and made my way to the front office. I waited there with Maya and Hitaishi, two of the other interns who would be accompanying my supervisor and I today. Soon enough, my supervisor, Aparna, had gathered all of the materials we would need for the day, and we loaded into the car.

As we pulled out of the Foundation's driveway and wove our way to the highway, we were all encouraged to take a nap if we felt so inclined. According to the driver, it would be about an hour before we arrived in the village.

A town we drove by while passing under a bridge

Whenever I am in a country unfamiliar to me, or even one that I've come to know for months on end, I never sleep while in transit. I make it a point to stay awake, to watch the road signs and the scenery, and to see how the landscape and development change as you drive (or ride, in the case of trains) along this foreign land.

I wrote down a number of my observations in my notebook as I stared out the passenger's side rear window of this silver Suzuki (it's the opposite side of what you're likely thinking---you can thank the Brits for that one). I've embellished each with a few of the details I hadn't the initiative to jot down at the time, but otherwise these are my honest thoughts as they occurred in the first moments I spent truly outside of the urban sprawl here in India:

The steel of the city has now faded to bricks.

This is the emptiest road I have been on in India.

The transliteration (for example, taking "राजमार्ग" to "raajamaarg," meaning highway in Hindi) has lost its prevalence the farther we travel. Almost everything is written in its natural Hindi script.

There are small markets and stalls popping up along the roadside, selling bananas, mangoes, and all sorts of fresh tropical produce.

The cows are everywhere now.

After the city, with its row of buildings upon buildings, the expansive fields I set my sights upon presently provide a much-needed rest for the overstimulated eye.

Despite the fog and the mist and the greyness of the day, I can see clearly that there are people working in many of these fields, men and women alike.

The clothing has become more traditional, head scarves are becoming more prevalent, as are Mosques.

There's a goat farm.

There are still massive power lines in the distance, running from metropolitan area to metropolitan area, criss-crossing the rural swathes between.

There are so many Pepsi ads---plastered to storefronts, painted on building sides, sprayed onto navy sheet metal.

Coca-Cola's here in spades, too.

We've stopped.

As it turns out, we'd arrived at the Sehgal Foundation's field office for this region, from which we had to grab some supplies. As Aparna called the office, we waited for a while on the side of the road there, during which time I found a passing sort of entertainment in watching the occurrences taking place just outside my door.

A country path to the nearby fields, with powerlines and mountains in the far distance

Immediately to the left of me were four boys, ages ranging from about 12 to 20 years old. They were working together to take apart a bit of a broken grill from a car that had likely been in an accident. There was one piece of metal that would not budge, despite the fact that each of the boys had taken their turn with the hammer. One of the boys retreated to the body shop, whose project I imagine this car was, and reemerged with a new tool: A metal pincers of sorts. Still, the metal would not budge. Each boy took a turn with each different tool, and still more tools were brought out as the battle was waged on.

As I sat there, I contemplated what life events had been so drastically different that they and I would be in this same place, at roughly the same age, for entirely different reasons and with entirely different backgrounds. The biggest factor had been something out of all of our control, the simple matter of where we were born. That fact settled unshapenly in my gut.

I never did get to see what became of the boys or their objective to remove the broken front bumper of that car. Pretty soon the one I was inside began to roll backwards as the driver better adjusted ourselves to be clear of the flow of traffic and closer to the field office, which we had apparently driven a tad too far past. We sat for a while there before I noticed another group that caught my attention.

On the side of the road just ahead of us, there were two young boys. They couldn't have been over five and ten years old, respectively. They were dressed in their Mosque clothes, with long silk-like shirts that went down to their thighs, and pants that matched exactly in shade and material. They wore sandals and a taqiyah, or topi, as well: a traditional cap that many Muslim men wear to pray. They held hands tightly as they crossed the road in front of us, waiting for the rickshaws, motos, big trucks, and cars to all pass before they made their move. In my mind, the two must have been brothers, and again my thoughts wandered. What circumstances had led these two to be so close, while my siblings and I are all thousands of miles apart? How does their relationship differ from the one I know with my younger brother?

I hadn't much time to ponder those questions, as soon the materials we needed were hand-delivered to our car by one of the field office staff. We thanked them, and were off again with a flip chart, poster paper, and markers now in hand.

Cows and goats grazing were a common sight as we traveled

As our four-lane divided highway dwindled to a two-lane road, I noticed that more and more of the young kids I saw were running around shirtless, or even naked, while many of the old uncles sat and smoked and played cards and laughed while keeping a loose eye on the little ones out and about.

As that two-lane road became a single paved path with no markings and hardly the space for a single American pickup in width, we had to wait for cattle to cross much more often as they wandered and grazed, or were encouraged along by locals.

As our one-lane paved path turned to laid brick as we entered the edge of the village, I noticed electric wires like high-tensile strung up by sticks, not power lines.

As the laid brick turned to dirt, I saw women carrying jugs of water on their heads to and from the nearby well, children splashing in the pool at the center of the village, having fun with friends or washing their cows and goats.

As the dirt road became impassable, I saw a small building to my left with mothers and children all gathered around.

We had arrived.

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INTERMISSION:

I pause now to thank you for making it this far in my story. I realize that my points have been long and rambling, and so I'm thankful for your time and attention. The rest of this day, the real substance of the story, will be coming in a part two sometime soon. Thank you again for reading my thoughts on the road to rural Haryana, and I hope you'll stick around for the second (more important) half of this tale!

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To be continued...