Alakkudi

“Ka-Pe, Ka-Pe, Sa-Mo-Sa-Teeeeeeeeee”
“Ka-Pe, Ka-Pe, Sa-Mo-Sa-Teeeeeeeeee”
    The voices of confectioners combine and echo down the platform, reminiscent of some religious chant, Gregorian perhaps, or something more fittingly eastern.  A hymn of commercialism, selling (we eventually translated, after examining their wares) ‘coffee, coffee, samosas and tea’ to the trains passengers at the Thanjavur station, where we hastily boarded.
    We were off for our first day of real fieldwork in a town called Alakkudi, a name when spoken quickly in an Indian accent is indistinguishable, at least at first, from the English ‘allegory.’  I feel like there should be some poignant conclusion to be drawn from this confusion, but nothing comes to me at the moment.  A ten minute train ride lands us at our destination, seemingly just a strip of concrete, a simple awning and a tree for shade, and a sign declaring the name, and an expanse of fields.  The rest of the town is revealed when the train rolls on.  Not much more is there to be revealed.  As the vibration hum of the train fades the cacophony of birds makes obvious the stillness, the lack of the machine buzz of the urban that even Thanjavur had.  Here, nothing but birds.
    We go to the house of the first family, Dami, Shulpa and I, ducking low to avoid hitting our heads on the beams supporting the roof.  I don’t duck low enough.  This is a pattern to be repeated many times this day.
    The walls are a cool blue, lit by light filtering in the door and a single fluorescent cylinder.  The concrete floors are smooth on our bare feet.  Shoes have been abandoned in the sweltering heat and red dust of the street before passing over the threshold.  We sit in the seats of honor—cheap pink plastic chairs—while members of the family gather round and sit on the floor.  One of the men, himself also in a chair, attempts to give it up to the matron of the family.  He barely ahs time to move before she starts cheerfully yelling at him, scaring him back into the chair with fast gestures and a faster flow of Tamil.  He tries to get a word in edgewise, but eventually concedes defeat and retakes his seat.  She triumphantly and gracefully folds herself onto the floor.  Her daughter and the third generation, and 8 month old baby in nothing but a string around its waist, join her.  We start talking.
    We are here to talk about education and financing, and that is more or less the direction of the conversation.  Shulpa translates, and we occasionally meander off topic but it doesn’t matter.  Their son is in his first year of a masters program in computer science at a local university in Thanjavur, and is hoping to finish the three year program in two, so as to save on tuition costs and start helping the family out sooner.  They say that theirs is one of the few families to send a child to higher education.  The cost of an education is so high—around 2 lacs, or the equivalent of around $4000, or higher in some cases—and jobs are not guaranteed if you don’t do well in school, so many poor families are reluctant to take the risk, even if financing is available.  They would rather have their children start working, contributing to the family’s income as soon as possible.  This family says that they are relatively rare.  Their son always did well in school (a claim supported by the stellar report card they proudly show us after digging around in a back room for a while) and they are willing to take the risk in the hope that their people will not be farmers forever.
    There are long periods of waiting in the conversation for me, as ideas slowly move between languages.  I make friends with the baby in this time, attracting his wide eyed and curious stare, then letting him clutch my finger, then holding him and sitting it on my knee with the approval of his father.  Only a few minutes after I hand him back to his mother, he proceeds to shit all over her sari and the floor.  I knew we invented diapers for a reason.
    We had a while to wait before lunch.  We wandered to the outskirts of town, along dirt roads only distinguishable from goat paths by the motorcycles that occasionally barreled down them, often carrying three or four people, small children in front clutching the handlebars.  We found a large lot shaded by a grove of palm trees and asked the woman working among them if we could sit in her yard.  She sat and talked with us, and served some of the best tea that I’ve ever tasted.  She told us, after hearing that we were researching education, that she had forced her parents to let her stop after 9th standard.  She was much happier just farming.  A bit later laugher broke out and Preethi translated for us—
    “She says that her favorite pass time is berating her husband.”  The woman had a mischievous expression on, and watched our faces during the translation.  She seemed quite happy with her lot in life.
    Lunch in the KGFS office, where small loans are given out backed by family gold and social pressure.  Kids from the school we passed on the way back to the center of town crowded around the gate in the front of the building, looking at the foreign animals on display—a whole crowd of Americans. 
    We had some time before the next appointment.  I spent it wandering through the streets of the town, up and down the gridlike layout, switching between the upper caste residences on one side of the main road and the lower on the other.  Houses of plaster, houses of mud. Hindu temples hidden between houses, families sitting on their front porches stare when they notice me.  Children laugh and follow for a block or so when I pass, asking me in broken English and sign language to take their picture.  From the adults I get different reactions, ranging from illegible expressions to outright suspicion to cheerful smiles and even a childlike request for a picture.   The afternoon sun is golden on the white and blue walls, and reflects off the water that splashes on the streets as people wash themselves, their dishes, their porches using the communal spigot.
    One last interview—ours is with the son of the family that we talked to before, back from classes.  We finish and go to the other interview going on, of a secondary school teacher, one of the richest members of the village.  He invites us in, and we sit listening to his longwinded and circuitous answer for 30 minutes.  Answer singular—I actually never heard a question, he just kept answering one asked before I arrived until we realized that the train was leaving in anywhere from 20 to 5 minutes. 
    Walking to the train station, we heard the trains whistle and saw the light piercing twilight.  We started to run.  No time to get onto the platform, instead we leaped onto the train from the adjacent tracks. Preethi, who bought tickets, only just got on board before it lurched forward, back to Thanjavur.  We had left for the village at 7, and were to arrive at 7:30.  A full day.