A Day in the Life of those around me….

As we live in the village and not within the temple ‘walls’ I have the opportunity to watch the local Bengalis, my neighbours going about their day. As mentioned previously, we live on the third floor and I often watch a few of my neighbours. I feel like a bit of a ‘perv’ but I do hope one day I will be able to meet and communicate with them.

I can see into the back of one neighbour’s house where there is the water pump and thus a constant place of activity, creaking away with every downward pump on the handle. On the left side is an outhouse and on the other side is a 2.5 metre waterhole where all the run-off from the water pump goes. It is fairly stagnant and, no doubt, a source of many mosquitoes. But dogs and birds will come by to steal a drink when they can. Behind this is the back yard where all the garbage and food scraps are tossed. Dogs, cows and the occasional goat or even jackal will scavenge through this for a feed.

I have counted an elderly couple who I assume are husband and wife and I’m probably correct. There is a man about 30 years old who I’ve seen, but mostly I see 2 women, about mid-20 to 30 years. They are the most active at the pump.

In fact, there is a regular program around that pump. Around 3.30 every morning the old man comes out for his morning bath. I lie in bed and listen to the creaking of the pump handle as it echoes through the stillness of the early morning. He collects the water into his lotah, or brass bathing pot. He fills it over and over and as he pours the cold water over himself he shouts out, “Nitai Gauranga! Nitai Gauranga!” in his elderly yet strong voice, calling out the names of those transcendental brothers, over and over again until he is finished. No one ever bathes naked in India and he carefully cleans himself with his kumcha, or short ‘sarong’ in place. Then he goes inside and begins his morning puja or worship. Sometimes he plays his harmonium and sings his scales and then chants lovely bhajans. But more often he plays his karatals, brass cymbals, and chants Hare Krsna. I image they have family deities and every morning he worships them with prayers, kirtan (chanting) and puja (offerings). I think this because later his wife will come out with the arotik trays, the trays used for the puja, and wash these under the pump.

By 5.30 the younger ladies of the house come out. First one of them will go up on the roof and sweep it clean because this is where they will hang the laundry. Then they take turns. One will wash their laundry while the other reaches for their toothbrush (no they aren't sharing toothbrushes...) kept in a stainless steel cup that is nailed to the wall. Then one will disappear into the outhouse and the other will take their bath, fully dressed. Without changing she will take her laundry up onto the roof and hang it out while she herself dries off in the cool morning air as it is only just spring and so cool to cold before the sun rises enough to warm the temperature. Then the other one will do the same thing. Eventually the old lady will come out and bath. Sometimes she has some dishes to wash.

Around 2 or 3 pm, one of the ladies brings out 2 children, a boy and a girl, about 7 or 8 years old, which I assume are hers. Earlier I will have seen them come home from school and now the mother will give each one a bath while they try to play and laugh with each other.

Here is the family with their outdoor pump. This is one of the ladies giving her children a mid-day bath...

...while they laugh and tease each other.

A truck loaded with gravel for another building couldn't fit throught the gate here and so dumped his load on the road and blocking through traffic...not that there is much. But nobody complains, no problem. The workers will simply move the gravel from here into place...

They will shovel a load into a basket that you can see the man on the left walking away with on his head...

 ...he hands this to another man along the path and they carefully swap the load over...

He will continue with the load...

...and will swap this with yet another man until the load reaches its final destination.

When a truck load of building material arrives the back is first opened and as usual there will be some material that falls out the back. Then several men will get in the back on top of the load and force down a rod to the bottom of the load. A measurement is taken while other men will carefully watch the procedure. Then the calculations are done and a price agreed upon for the unloading of what is left in the truck. The customer will not pay for what has fallen out the back of the truck naturally but will only pay for what will actually be manually removed. Here you can see there are 2 men on shovels with ropes attached and 2 men outside the truck holding onto those ropes. They will pull on the ropes as the other men are shovelling the gravel out thus having 2 men per shovel.

On the other side of our apartment is yet another building going up. We watched them from our rooftop as they were pouring concrete for the topmost floor they were working on. Well, not pouring exactly! There was a steady queue of workers/wallas who were carrying the cement on their heads from the area where all the materials were dumped and being mixed by hand. I haven't seen a single wheelbarrow in all of India! I took a video of it and I will try to upload it here - but you know the lack of success I am having with up loading certain videos Let's see how we go.

Yes, I know. It's on its side. One day I will find a program that will help me turn these right side up. But till then you get the picture...if it will load up that is! Hope so, cus it is pretty damn fascinating! So quit your complaining!

Oh yes! It worked! Plus I worked out how to fix the previously promised videos so that I can post them. But that will be another day. Time for bed now.