At the bottom of everything

[For my program -- SOL -- we submit four 'Letter Home' essays during the summer that consist of our thoughts at the time. This is my third letter.]

It is said that before the Thar was a desert it was sea. Before there were roads, cars, or even people it was a vast expanse of blue and sterling waves crashing in every direction. Before half was in Pakistan and half was India, all of it was at the bottom of everything. Here, one could find every type of fish and sea creature. It was not how it is now: a parched, arid land, ignorant of its own irony. It is a land where one can find me on this certain Saturday of July, the sand in between my toes as I drudge toward my next interview resisting and not giving way to progress. This desert is where I have decided to help others but in my mind this notion has become ridiculous and impossible. I think to myself that I cannot help these people because they cannot even help themselves.

I meet Chowdra Ram in the middle of the day. I am here to interview him because he is a beneficiary of GRAVIS’ tanka program. His family was economically disadvantaged enough to need this structure and his thoughts are valuable in assessing its impact on a family. Immediately as we enter his pukka room he brings a bucket of water. I, of course, refuse because of my timidity to such foreign things. He is my third interview of the day, but I still notice his passion. From the white turban expertly wrapped around his head to the crow that seemed to have stepped a hundred times to leave a footprint next to his eye, I can tell he has really lived for years. He has no doubt lived through the Partition and British Rule, the years of good rains and the years of bad rain. He has lived to bear children who have themselves bore children. But now he is reduced. He does not go for wage labor or anything that the earner of the household usually does, he lets his son do these things. Now he does the miscellaneous tasks; he does the little things that no less must be done. At the bottom of everything the little things matter: feeding the cattle, collecting the cow pads, and cleaning the tanka. I ask questions in English and he nods and grunts as though he understands, but I know he never had the opportunity to even learn Hindi because he had to work for money as a child. His eyes are full of emotion that radiate as though it is all being released in his focused stare. After a question has been posed it is translated to Marwari. He listens with the same veracity in his nods and grunts and replies with the passion I saw earlier, his hand waving up and down to signal his various points. “Our biggest problem is food ... there have been droughts annually ...” he declares as the interview continues.

Figure 1: Chowdra Ram mid-sentence

We stay afterward while chai is made, and we converse. I leave the brick room that borders the catchment area of the tanka to go to the jeep and fetch my filtered water. On the way back I spot him on the dirt path that sweeps through his barren field devoid of rainwater thus devoid of crop. He is tending to an animal. Once I am close enough he looks at me and places his arm around me, the passion from the interview softened in a way I do not know how to approach. He looks at me and says “Madd Karo” (Help us). I am struck, help you? “Kaisaa” (How?). Still looking at me he replies “Paise de do” (Give money). I say I do not have any and I walk quicker. I walk in such a way that the awkwardness of the situation does not persist; I walk and I think: but I am helping. Isn't this interview helping? Won't my report help? No ... the truth is it won't help in the way that is wanted. Not for these people and not for this man. He does not need someone to ask him questions, and he does not need policy as a result – these things are not important to him at the moment. The salient truth is he needs money, and he needs it now.

At the bottom of everything I also find Divya Bai's household. She is in the field with her cows as we approach in a jeep, and she begins to walk back to her hut through the patchy grass. She covers so that no one can decipher her face through her red, cotton sari; she is a devoted wife even though her husband has already died. This fact about her husband is sad but not unique. There are many widows throughout the Thar. I read my introduction in Hindi before the interview begins. In it, I ask her if she will participate and she says of course. I then tell her that I will not use her name or photo and she responds with laughter. I was not fazed: everyone seems to laugh at this portion of my script because it doesn't matter to them if their name appears in a distant report that they will never even see. Then my translator relays her explanation: that it does not matter because she is at the lowest of the low -- she has no husband and her family has left her alone in this hut with the field. She has been surviving on her own with savings for seventeen long months, and her son has decided to have nothing to do with her. Immediately, my interview feels useless, empty. The questions I am asking her seem inconsequential and without substance. “How did the tanka meet your expectations ... how did you obtain water before … what do you use the water for?”... How are you surviving!? Although the last question was not a part of the interview, I wish I had asked it. This woman has no family anymore and she cannot even think of working for wage away from her home (that is what her husband used to do). The interview ends without asking various questions I had on my sheet. There was nothing more to find out. We left the hut where she lived away from everyone she knew. We walked through her field as she continued the work she had been doing with her cows when we arrived. Her life has not changed one bit from when I arrived to when I left; I have not given her anything tangible. I step onto the metal step that leads into the back of the jeep, and I reach a finality: she will not remember me anyway.

It is the same way with all the families that I interview. I am just a speck and a momentary interruption in their daily lives. I am a blip on the radar; a foreigner that has come and gone. I am introduced as being from 'outside' – America –, but they most likely do not even know where that is in relation to their own location. As much as I may fight it, this feeling will eventually be mutual. I will forget them. As soon as my work finishes here, and I jet off to the United States what will I take with me of Chowdra Ram and Divya Bai? They are what I am to them: a foreigner that has come and gone. An interview I have taken and will have used. They are a population that I have sampled, and they are a part of a report I will have written. But that moment I was asked for money by an aging man that no doubt has little life left to live still bothers me. It is not because of how uncomfortable it made me feel but how powerful the sentiment it was derived from seems to be. The report that I write may never be used again, packed away in the endless files that are in this office. GRAVIS may use it as a reference for a future intern or it may appear in a bibliography of another's writings. My report may never help the people in this desert directly and its lack of permanence, its mortality, is upsetting. I want, however implausible it may sound, immediate impact. But this doesn't happen. It cannot happen. This internship is an exercise in patience, and for all intensive purposes a warm up for my future. One day I will not be a blip or a fleeting face, but I will be able to help in a way that is pragmatic and sustainable.

I watched my charcoal gray shorts rest on my thighs as the day was ending and we drove restlessly toward the field center. I looked around me and imagined the life that used to occupy this space. Perhaps a whale swam here or a goldfish there. I imagined how full it used to be. I then looked around me and quit day-dreaming. I saw the golden specks whisked up by the tires and the sun taking its time to leave these godforsaken plains. It is here I have chosen to try to help people, but I believe that I have lost some hope. I am comforted by only one thing: from the bottom of everything there is only one direction.

Figure 2: A child of an interviewed family