I had applied through the Foundation for Sustainable Development in April for the opportunity to work as an intern with a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in India for the summer. Once accepted, the month between the end of finals and my departure for India became somewhat of a chaotic rush to ensure that the visa, travel plans, inoculations, luggage and fees were ready. Even then, I landed at Udaipur, in the state of Rajasthan, with only half of the required inoculations and a pack of second-hand malaria pills reputed to give one hallucinations. Summer was just then nearing its fiery solstice.
These days, it is hard to see much of the charm that has given Udaipur the informal title of the most romantic city in India. The glimmering Lake Palace, so often photographed, languishes in a lake robbed of water by years of drought. In yet another of the contradictions that dominate the Indian landscape, a canal has been dug and filled with water in the lakebed to maintain the customary gondola ride to the hotel in the Palace at a time when rife water shortages are a commonplace fact of life. Indeed, in this City of Lakes, hardly a lake brims with so much as a foot of the blue stuff. A changing climate threatens to divest the breathtaking vistas of the beauty that once enchanted maharanas.
After a week of orientation and Hindi lessons-the latter a laudable attempt to condense close to a millennia of linguistic complexity into six intense days-I commenced the first of my weekly commutes to the village headquarters of my NGO, the rather grandiosely named Mahan Seva Sansthan (Great Service Organization). In rural India, there are generally four ways to travel. In order of popular preference they are by Jeep, motorcycle, bus or foot. A first experience on a '70s-era bus, straining its way over hillocks and into valleys, is quite simply unforgettable. My posterior was in the air more often than on the seat; now and then, the driver would swerve sharply, albeit with a nonchalance borne of practice, to avoid cows and water buffaloes ambling along the sides of the road. On the weekends, as villagers return from the city, buses are choked with teeming humanity, and their roofs become the seats of choice for many.
In the course of my work assessing a watershed development program to mitigate drought conditions in two villages, I traversed the tehsil (block, or smaller parcels of the district) on the back of a motorcycle and on foot. The field staff at the NGO make a mockery of dirt bikers, negotiating hairpin turns and scarred roads without fuss. It is during the long treks from village to village, though, that one observes firsthand the staggering desolation in summer morphing into a lushness boasting half a dozen shades of green in the monsoon season. For three months of the year, as the rains come in their multitude or meagerness, the burnt earth sprouts with new life. At any other time, the harsh lot of the Rajasthani farmer is the blazing ever-present sun and a semi-fertile field tilled by man and animal. His is an existence barely eked out even in the best of times, with little hope of any other for his children. Perhaps most astonishingly, very little is said in complaint or malcontent. The greatest of the paradoxes, then, must be that while we know material wealth is a poor measure of satisfaction, it is those ignorant of that truism who most embody it.
The father of the host family with whom I lived in the village of Kolyari explained that this is because most of the villagers had little conception of life outside their communities. This family of four, including two incredibly adorable boys of four and two, was one I grew to love and miss. Indeed, in spite of the austerity of village life, everyone was unfailingly hospitable in his or her own way, and especially in those challenging moments of sickness (diarrhea being a particular problem), misery and exhaustion. Indians are born that way, one of the field workers reflected.
Free of the cynicism that so often characterizes urban living and our centers of civilization, the people of one Indian village educated me a little in warmth and sincerity. Just that, I think, would have made my entire summer worthwhile.