Beyond the Internship

The month of December is a busy one for students in the second year of the B.Tech. program in our college. As part of the curriculum, the students are sent off in groups for a rural internship, under an NGO assigned by an appointed committee. This internship includes working with the NGO on one of its projects in a rural area in India, trying to incorporate the ICT education we've received so far.

The "compulsory" Rural Internship is supposed to be an enlightening experience for the highly excited sophomores, fresh out of the oppressive terrors of third semester. The post traumatic rehabilitation starts manifesting itself in forms of excessive excitement, planning, shopping and peaks of high five sessions with friends being sent together to intern. It is the official four weeks away from your normal life, with the kind of people you might never have met/seen and might never meet/see ever again in the future, all on your own, trying to help those people supposedly using your technical expertise.

For the internship, I got an opportunity to work with ‘Abhiyan’, an NGO centered in Bhuj-Kutch, Gujarat. It was the first time travelling to Bhuj for me, as well as the two friends that were grouped with me. I was sort of prying, looking for something peculiar right from the moment we reached Bhuj. This place had a major earthquake, man! Why does it look so normal? The irrelevance of the question dawned on me when I realized it had been almost 14 years since that time. Oh, well.

We were sent by the NGO to their field office at Khavda, a village 70 km north of Bhuj. On our way to Khavda, the driver told us that the road we were on led straight to Pakistan. I was so in awe with that mere idea of being so close to a country I've only looked at on a map, and heard of in the news. Little did I know, there were one too many moments of awe in store for me in the rest of the 4 weeks.

The NGO had us engaged in a project which we found to be perfectly suited to us. At Abhiyan, we joined an ongoing project which was in collaboration with a London-based organisation, Reach to Teach. This project mainly focuses on improving the quality and functioning of the education system in the villages of Kutch.

Our main role was to meet the highly irregular students at the schools and their families, realize the reasons, suggest solutions and bring as many students to school as possible. Secondly, as the condition of the female members of the respective School Management Committees of various villages is expected, and very truthfully so, to be weak in terms of awareness, let alone participation, we were to meet them and provide information about their roles and try to activate their participation.

I visited different villages almost every day, met different children and their families, had a new lesson learnt each day. On our very first day's visit to a village school, I saw a bunch of little kids gathering outside the office gate staring at the new women (yes, us) that had entered their territory. They were equally amazed to see us as we were to see them, I reckon. If they had camera phones like us, they'd also have probably taken a picture of us to show their friends, don't you think?

One of the weirdest things was that all the people in a village dressed in the same kind of clothes. By all, I mean all. Be it little eight month olds who couldn't even walk by themselves, or be it 80 year olds, they would all have the same kind of dresses. The males wore Pathani kurta and pyjama, both the same color. All the females wore this thing over their heads that, I found, was called dedho in Kutchi. While reading or writing at school, they'd have to put it behind their shoulders again and again, while it kept falling in front of their eyes by virtue of its dimensions and their angle. It felt like this euphemism to their everyday lives where they have this constant obstruction to moving forward in life.

All the villages that I was in-charge of, had Muslim communities. They had these peculiar kind of names like Sufaiya, Halima, Abadrim, Shahpad, Alma, etc. To them, my name was hard to get. There were very few times when someone asked me my name and didn't ask for it again. To them, the fact that I wasn't married at 19, was a big deal. To them, I was 'that madam from Gandhinagar who wants to bring my child to school'. To me, they were a new world.

My commute to all the villages would primarily be by motor bikes. The journeys were absolutely out of the world. The roads were in incredibly amazing condition. On almost all days, we were the only ones on the roads, there being negligible number of vehicles in the villages. Now, another interesting fact that I came to know of, was that the women in the villages waited to fall sick, just so they could get to travel to Khavda to the hospital! Never in their lives have they left their native villages. And here I was, 700 kilometer away from home.

One thing that holds enormous warmth in the memories of my internship is the sky. It was there that I realized, more consciously, that skies are different at different places. The kind of cloud formations, sunrises and sunsets, shades and hues, that I witnessed in Kutch, were such that I had never seen before.

One day I woke up early and got to see the sunrise. I stayed there for a long time, simply looking, and taking pictures of course, until the sun started hurting my eyes.

The kids were so pretty and nice there. Despite the major language barrier, I managed to communicate with them and their families even, with the broken Kutchi that I learnt over the weeks. It was extremely satisfying to have them understand what I tried to say and to understand what they were saying. Here in our daily lives, we hardly realize how huge an advantage having a common language is. When you don't know the other person's language, there's this big part of that person you will never get to know. That's one thing I regret. I was immensely interested in the people that I met there and I'm sure I could've learnt a lot of things if only I could speak better Kutchi.

Another wonderful memory is that of our visit to the fame of Kutch. One fine Sunday, we went to visit the Safed Rann (Literally, White Desert). Despite having heard quite a deal about how beautiful it is, what I felt after being there, right in the middle of a lot of whiteness, cannot be described. Majority of the feelings I had in the four weeks, cannot be articulated. Precisely why I have so many pictures here!

I was kinda pissed off with all the people stomping their shoes on the beautiful whiteness. It made the White Rann less white with all the brown mud surfacing from inside. But, well, what could we do.

Also, the Rann ('desert' in Gujarati), didn't actually have white 'sand'. It was more like salt. I learnt that the entire thing was actually river deposit. I filled the salt/sand in a tiny box and brought it back as a souvenir.

All of the four weeks, in retrospect, were entirely different from the life that I've lead so far; quite literally. My eating habits (no breakfasts, irregular lunches, self-made dinners), sleeping habits (way too early), bathing habits (once in four days, or so), speaking habits (an addition to my linguistic hall of fame); everything, every aspect of my life took a stunningly different direction.

Quoting one of my friends, it was "A December I'll never forget."

My Twofold Summer Memoirs

I generally consider myself a very adaptable person. Always happy to be anywhere, enjoying the good bits, being optimistic. I ignore the issues that loyally stick to me whenever I am at a different place than yesterday.

When I’m at college, I have these occasional pangs of nostalgia that leave after-effects connoted by me missing home uncontrollably. I think of things and feelings that the warm notion of “home” brings with it. When I get home, I’m good for a couple of days and then I realise how good college life is. I miss the sweet freedom of sleep timings, food choices, and most importantly, the precious company. And then I’m left yearning for college. Anyway, tickets have been booked, decisions been made. You can’t go back for at least a month. Calling that period of 30 days ‘very important’, would be an understatement.

I found myself helpless, left with infinite online bucket lists and verbal bucket lists from experienced people talking about what I might tend to do and what I must do for summer. Apparently, all those words did not sink in. They simply reflected off of me. I’m a shiny plain surface, I reckon.

Ten days into the vacation, I sat down to introspect over my activities. I could get nothing save the book I was reading. Rest of the time was spent eating more than needed, sleeping more than needed, indifferently delaying plans of going out and meeting old friends, watching Game Of Thrones, bullying my younger brother to get me things I was too lazy to get myself. I’m inherently lazy, but I felt even more intense a feeling of sluggishness this time. I looked at a piece of paper. The paper I had so enthusiastically filled, making plans, scribbling away all the things I wanted to do for summer. The heat of foreseen events was as good as the summer’s. Sadly, it had all sort of died out now.

The next 10 days were to be spent in the comfort of my maternal grandparents’ home. The clichéd scenario depicting a kid coming back fatter and richer from grandparents’ visit stood absolutely true for me.

Part 1

Train journeys in Rajasthan become boring for people like me, who have no charms of train commute besides distraitly gazing out the window. Generally, I get to see changing landscapes, farms, houses, rivers, people. In Rajasthan, it seems as if we’re stuck with a photo on the window and we’re looking at the same damn photo all the time. No changes in view. A photo of a vast ochre yellow landscape sparsely filled with trees having dull green leaves, planted distant enough from each other to have each one's shadow complete on the sand. No evidence of life.

Almost every summer vacation of my life so far has been spent in the dunes (not literally). The state of Rajasthan is known for its extreme, scorching summer heat. The kind that burns you, literally. I started feeling the peculiar heat of my native state as soon as I got off the train. We had an hour long journey from the railway station to my grandparents' home. En route, I had the same picture stuck on the car's window pane, again, with occasional encounters with camels and cars for a change. Then I took a wise decision, choosing to stare outside the windshield rather than the window I had by my side of the seat. When I saw a mirage, I stared with amazement and as soon as it disappeared, I waited for the next. I love that part of road travel where vehicles start disappearing in the horizon. This part is an attribute of hilly roads. When I was little, I used to pretend I'm on a rollercoaster. Driving high up, only to scream our guts out when gravity hugs us back down again. Imagination is a saviour when your surroundings conspire to kill you of boredom.

Sardarshahar is named after Prince Sardar Singh of Bikaner, Rajasthan. It has nothing to do with sardars anymore. But I'm almost always questioned about this whenever I name my native town, to which my response is a powerless, exasperated smile. When I reached Sardarshahar, I started reliving all those vacations I had spent there. Now that I had developed a more keen sense of vision, I observed all the houses, the shops and the people, with better attention. I thought, I have seen this town growing. I've seen how it has evolved. But I like the fact that certain things, like the shops of the halwai and use of donkey carts, have not been blown in the urbanisation cyclone.

My grandparents received us with the same hugs, not a degree less warm than they were last time. It's amazing how they're the same every time I meet them, even though it's always after a year. I realised that the house now looked smaller to me and the people I met, older.

There's no electricity most of the time, which gave me an opportunity that I never asked for, but as I understood later, I needed. No TV, no laptop, very minimal use of mobile phone was all I needed. Younger cousins of mine fed cows, buffaloes, oxen and dogs, everyday. It was such a fun activity for them. They used to wait for something to come in front of the house, asking for food. It could be anything with legs and an appetite, and they'd take a bunch of rotis and go feed it. They'd also keep a long wooden stick with them, just in case. I found it amusing. But I was glad they were busy doing these things instead of playing video games. We also made castles in the sand with the cousins. We had mutually divided the works. One would gather sand, another would dampen it so it could be moulded. And two of us worked on making the castle. After an hour of building, rebuilding and final touches, we were proud creators of a clumsy little sand castle that could barely be seen from a distance, given that it had the same colour as its surroundings.

Early mornings were the best. The sun was up just right. Enough to make the sky blue from black, but not enough to heat the ground. There'd be birds chirping, with a soft breeze blowing. I absolutely loved the mornings there. That was incentive enough to wake up early. The noons were terribly hot with the sun at its prime. And the nights so cold, I woke up with a cold every other day. Such is the hypocrisy of deserts.

When I visited relatives there, I made it a point to talk a lot to them about their lives. Some of them, who've spent all their lives in Sardarshahar itself, told me how they used to live in the same houses earlier. With no electricity, no water supply, and a very small number of rooms inhabited by a number of people too large for the rooms. They used to gather on the terraces and chat with neighbours for hours. They talked more back then. Urbanisation has made the world smaller, but has distanced people from one another.

Part 2

I had 5 days to spend in the capital, where my maternal uncle resides. It is an overnight bus journey from Sardarshahr to Delhi. I naturally didn't have a sound sleep and my eyes opened now and then. As dawn broke, and we reached Delhi, I couldn't keep my eyes shut any longer. It was stunning outside.The underground metro site was fenced on both sides with metal boards. At the upper edge of the fences, there was a narrow rubber tube which glowed. As the bus increased its pace, I could see brilliant parallel light trails. I loved the sight. This continued for a few kilometres. I reached home, hungover.

I found that Delhi hasn't changed in all these years as much as Sardarshahar has.

The very day I reached, the place was hit by a thunderstorm. I was out on the street at that time. Standing below a shelter with a few strangers, I witnessed lightning striking out of the sky. The sky, filled with thick, dark clouds. It was sheer stupefaction seeing a bright, sunny sky change into a gloomy, absolutely dark one. My senses found repose in the sky and its wonders.

That incident will bide in my memory for a very long time.

Visits to Delhi include monuments, malls and tempting, absolutely amazing street food. Long drives on the sexy roads. Billboards, flyovers and the energy. Delhi is fabulous.

We travelled on foot within Sardarshahar, hardly set foot on Delhi roads.

Delhi was as hot as Sardarshahar. But air-conditioning was like the cruel witch and we were delicate Rapunzels. Malls, cars, home. Air-conditioning followed us everywhere. And we were too afraid to let go. Even our return journey from Delhi was air-conditioned. And then I wondered how I had spent those days in Sardarshahar, without air-conditioning.

We are trapped, by choice.

Originally, advancements in technology were meant to add comfort to our lives, and free us from working manually. Experiencing the rural-urban divide, I cognized that real freedom lies not in artifical and material provisions, rather in the little, ignored aspects like warm relations with people and places.

This reminds me of something I recently read in The Fountainhead: "The basic trouble with the modern world, is the intellectual fallacy that freedom and compulsion are opposites."..."In essence, freedom and compulsion are one. For example, traffic lights restrain your freedom to cross a street whenever you wish. But this restraint gives you the freedom from being run over by a truck."

Two places, two eyes, two ears and a curious outlook, integrate to give wonderful memories!

Even though I did not do big things I could show for, I had a worthwhile experience. I saw the places I saw every year, but this time with a different perspective.

I hope I write about my hundredfold travel memoirs someday!

[The pictures have been clicked from my good ol' phone camera.]