HOME STAY

On the train to K-town I must have eaten something bad. Before any slums or a full day in K-town, I woke up my very first morning with stomach problems. Maybe the local term, “loose motion” puts it more bluntly. Then I started getting a bit nauseous and weak and laid down for a couple of days just resting. I was due to move into my home stay, and felt good enough to do so. So I did.

At the moment I’m living with an older couple whose kids and grand kids all live in a village. It’s a long, narrow community along the railroad tracks, but there’s a wall between the tracks and us. Beside the wall there are some cement public toilets that are about one to every 50 people. Countless plastic buckets line the main lane along the wall where water rations are stored, clothes are washed, dishes washed and little kids sometimes pee. It’s a busy lane from 6 to 10 am when the water spickets have water available. Then there remains a long lane of colorful dripping saris and other clean clothes.

Bathing is public, but no, we don’t get naked! Strange, I know, that we keep our clothes on. But trust me it’s better that way. Men and women go to their separate spickets and take turns using buckets or the free flowing water. The men suds up while wearing shorts or lungies (man skirts). To rinse, many of us sit cross-legged beside the spicket and rinse sitting down. Women bathe in saris/ dresses, and all I know is that somehow it works for them. Feel free to try it at home and let me know.

If you walk from the main lane 20 feet down one alley, turn right 20 feet, then left 20 more, you’ll reach my house. In part of the brick alley I need to shift just slightly sideways to fit. My brick house is 7 by 8 feet and I climb up a ladder to my loft room where I have electricity, a bed, window, fan and a black and white TV. When trains pass by, my bed gently rattles like an unreported earthquake. Hindu idols on their god shelf by my bed seem to watch me sleep with their glazed, hollow eyes.

Walking through the community in the evening is lively as people are returning home for the night after a hot day. People saying hi slow me down, stop me or sit me down. Young men and teenagers are playing a board game at their “club” area where they also have a communal TV and space for chatting and meeting.

Cooking takes place both inside and outside, with both wood and gas as fuel. The doorstep is often the kitchen. Smoke curls through the alleys and I cough. But then I smell a large portion of a family’s earnings boiling over the smoke and it smells like life that is cherished. It looks like the culmination of their day… to work hard, to eat enough as a family and then to sleep under one small roof together in peace. I’m learning a lot from my neighbors, and I’ve just gotten my toe wet.