A Village in Tamil Nadu--text only
Written by: Jennifer Polan
The Village Adventure
This article is an informal account of a trip to an
Indian village. --introduction
I am a student of an M.A. Social Work program at
Madras Christian College in Tambaram, Chennai, India.
Each year the first years travel to a village for 10
days in the fall semester to experience village life
and practice social work. My class is 26 students, 16
girls and 10 boys. The Head of the Department of
Social Work, Madras Christian College, accompanied us.
The idea of going to a village was new for most of the
classmates, only a few have come from the village
side; the rest have been born and bought up in the
city. All the students in my class are Indian; I am
the only non- Indian. The planning of the trip
started in September. Ideas were proposed by those
who knew NGOs in several village locations. From
those proposals, two were selected as pilot visits.
Two students were chosen to make the pilot visits and
after the visits were completed, the remaining
classmates were given an overview of the localities
and the types of situations there. The class had
decided to go to a village called Kalyanapuram, a
village 20 kilometers from Vandavasi, and 100
kilometers from the MCC College.
The village of Kalayanpuram is south of Chennai, with
most route following the same route to Pondicherry, as
taken by the bus we boarded. The roads most on the
way to Vandavasi are wide and for the most part easily
passable, there are many small towns along the way.
Vandavasi has a main bus terminus and is something
like a border area. After passing through there, the
roads become very narrow and full of potholes and not
easily passable. The roads are tarred for some time,
and then there are parts which are only dirt roads.
Though the road is only wide enough for one way
traffic, the side of the roads are also freely used as
the road itself, making it a bit easier for traffic to
pass on both sides, but when a truck passes the bus or
visa versa, one vehicle must stop on the side of the
road to let the other pass. Sometimes this is okay,
but then at sometimes it is something like an
adventure when you see a swamp on one side of you.
To reach the village from Vandavasi is 20-minute bus
ride from Vandavasi to the main road leading to the
Kalyanapuram. This ride is with narrow roads and many
small villages are passable. In this area you only
find people living in huts, and there are not many
shops in the area nor are there phones. When we
reached our destination, we deboarded the bus, all 30
of us on the deserted road with our 60 or so pieces of
luggage. All the villagers in that vicinity came
outside to stare at us. On this main road there was a
small cluster of huts on both sides of the road, maybe
equaling 15, and a small shop selling some rebottled
cool drinks and snacks. There is no phone here, or
for 20 kilometers. (The nearest phone is in
Vandavasi.) I had not realized this is not the
village. Our stay would be some four kilometers from
this main road, we would wait for our transportation
here for some time.
While waiting, some of us had to use toilet
(thankfully I was not one of them!), so the only place
is the field. The people do not have or know of
toilets in this area be it the western or Indian
types. Soon after this escapade, our transport had
arrived.
Two bullock carts had come to receive us, one for
luggage and one for several girls to ride on, the rest
of the classmates would walk the distance. I opted
for the bullock cart ride, which was a new and a nice
experience. The first half-kilometer of the ride was
a paved road, two way traffic passable. The rest was
dirt road, passable by one way only. The roads were
generally smooth but a few potholes here and there.
The journey to the destination passed us through a few
smaller villages along the way.
When we arrived, we unloaded our goods and placed into
our common hostel (boys and girls hostelled in the
same hut for a few days), a hut. This hut is a basic
one- room facility composed of concrete base, concrete
wall and floors, but a thatched roof made from tree
trunks, grass and leaves. There were two electric
tube lights, one on each end of the hut, and one
ceiling fan at one end of the hut. The middle section
of the hut is without tube light and without fan. The
construction of the hut is optimal for staying cool in
hot weather, but not at all suitable for rains. If it
rains, tarps have to be placed on the top of the roof
by walking up on the roof on the sections which are
trunks, else wise, as some of the adventurous boys
came to find out you could fall through the roof if
you walk on it! Luckily, it did not rain when we were
there, else it would have been a big problem for us!
This hut was used for night sleeping, eating meals and
all general indoor activities.
Generally in such villages in India, there are no
toilet, indoor water supplies or bathroom (meaning
inclosed places to take baths), which was the case
even in this village. Luckily, the NGO we were
sponsored by had built a toilet and a bathhouse for
us. The toilet was an Indian- squat type toilet
enclosed by a wall made of tree barks, banana and
coconut tree leaves. There was no door to the toilet,
so each trip has to be made in pairs, one girl would
be a look out for the other. Since there is no water
supplies, we had to carry buckets of water to the
toilet for cleaning ourselves and flushing the toilet.
In such a place there is no toilet paper and soap is
not easy to come by unless you bring your own to the
toilet with you. The toilet was a bit far from the
hut, a 2 minute walk past most of the villagers huts
which surrounded our hostel-hut. One nice thing, is
you do not have to worry about it getting too cold,
since Indian climate, even in December does not go
under 40 or so in the night time and 80 in the day
times. If you have to use the toilet in the night, do
not forget your flashlight! The bathhouse was for the
women only, it was three stalls, each walls made of
the same material as the wall of the toilet. The bath
houses were a bit closer to the hut and it had door of
a leafy type. It was a big adjustment for us girls as
we felt those from outside could look inside and see
us as we bathed! Somehow we adjusted and managed.
Taking a bath in such a situation is quite interesting
due to that and the bathhouse not having a celing.
Thankfully, it did not rain at all during bathing, so
the sun shone on us, warmly. The floor of the
bathhouse is dirt only, the bare ground, so after some
girls take bath before others, the floor of the bath
house gets quite muddy, so you have to bathe wearing
chappals (flip-flops or sandals).
