The heat is intense. She is flat on her back – the fan is on 3 .. whirring and clattering a little as it labours its way around its age. Stretched out on the striped floor mat, her sari loosened for the night – she cluthces a damp cloth in her hand used to occasionally wipe the sweat from her face and neck. The children lie in a heap nearby. She pants slightly and wonders again if she is going to get any sleep on this unrelenting night.
Its May – hot season – the rains are yet to even be imagined and the mercury doesn’t fall below 35 even in the middle of the night … sometime close to dawn a slight breeze picks up and the temperature drops just a little and the whole world has a sense of a sigh of breathing out. A sigh of relief.
At 5 the call to prayer comes – first with a crackle of the loudspeaker being turned on .. then the offkey and heart catching call begins. Allahhhhhhhhh akbar.. allllahhhhhhhhh … it’s morning and there are only moments more to sleep. If she doesn’t rise soon before the sun – it will be far too hot to even think of her daily chore of the long walk to the water pump. So she rolls over and clutching her sari to herself .. she winds it back into place.. its not time to do more than rub her face with her damp hands, wash her mouth .. and check on the baby before she goes out the front door of her small house – down the step past her sleeping husband on the front concrete bench – to catch up the small trolley – with hooped steel straps placed just so to hold the 4 plastic water carriers.
Perhaps she can manage 5.. she places another empty one on top of the other four and starts off down the dusty pathway. Its a good walk to the place where the water reluctantly spurts up from the hand pump – as she treads the daily path she starts to wake properly and is joined by other women – and the slightly older children sent from the home to carry the daily water. There is little talk on this walk – the women are tired by mid May – no energy to joke and laugh together – and the children accompanying them are also subdued. The daily walk, the heavy pushing back along the rutted track – the constant struggle just to survive doesn’t leave much space for fun.
But as they walk in single file along the track – one woman begins to sing.. low at first – and then louder.. she chants .. a bhajan – a song of devotion – a song to the Lord Krishna – her voice is high – and as she begins to sing, the other women join in .. they lift their voices together – the chant rises and falls as they walk – and the chant goes on – one woman takes up the rhythm and beats a small metal cup against the side of her metal cart.. the chant continues. In this way they arrive at the hand pump. It is already fully in operation – each woman taking her turn to pump – the clunk of the mechanism and the sloosh of the water falling rhythmically in time with the bhajan into the lined up water pots.
As they fill – they are hoisted onto the small carts – or lifted on to the hip – and some first placing the circular pad of cloth on their head and effortlessly seeming to swing the full container up to rest on the circle and they walk back the way they came. Their feet bare or in dusty ‘chappals’ sandals – meeting the earth as they take the long trek back to the village.
Each woman either pushing her small trailer or carrying kilos of water on her head or hip – walking the path home. Where her work day will begin in earnest.
Time for sweeping .. she picks up the hand made broom of sticks and begins to sweep out the floor of her house, and into the road outside. The bedding of the night – the simple mat folded and placed on top of the sacks of grain – stored also in the house – the goat taken to a new spot to be tied up – and the children sent off to find at least a few branches of something green for it to eat. It bleats in protest – waiting for breakfast is never its strong point!
Some dried sticks now poked into the small chulla (stove) and a pot of precious water placed on top – for the morning chai. Her husband waiting also as impatiently as the goat for his sweet hot drink before he too begins his day in the fields.
Some left over rice from the night before with a meagre splash of watery spiced gravy is shared between the family and the children are readied for school. Hair slicked down with Parachute – the local coconut oil – a ribbon holding the long plait in place – and the school uniform marking them out as those fortunate enough to receive at least some education. And now the baby fed and ready for sleep again is swung into the sari hung as a hammock from an iron hook in the ceiling and quietens down – the ‘hammock’ swung by each member of the family who passes it.
Gathering up the tools of his trade – the hooked small hand scythe, a sack for collecting grain, an old plastic bottle filled with water for the day – and wrapping his grubby hand woven towel around his head the farmer leaves the house heading for the dry fields – squinting at the rapidly rising sun – and knowing that soon it will be simply too hot to do much more than squat under the meagre shade of the tree in the middle of his field and wait – wait – waiting – waiting for rain.
The whole village is waiting – waiting for rain – it will come .. they have that faith but when? It used to come almost like clockwork – in early June the big banked clouds would build and the soaring temperatures be heavy with humidity – almost to the point of being unable to breathe. But now – in these past three or four years – no one seems to know any more when and even if it will rain. The clouds come – they build – and they blow away. They come and build and the blue black of their underside is rent with lightening and they blow away. The rains are coming – the villagers wait – the farmers plough their fields – the oxen labouring along pulling the hand plough – back and forth – and the farmers scratch their heads .. and look at the sky .. and debate amongst themselves – when is it right to sow the seeds? At midday when they escape the dust of the fields and sit under the big banyan tree in the centre of the village – they talk of little else. When are the rains coming.
And the women – they rise as always early at the call to prayer and go to pray in their own way on the path to the pump which dribbles less and less water as the days pass – and they pray that the water will still be there tomorrow .. and that the rains will come.
