Last Day in Navargaon

5th October, 2013

Emotional moments, cancelled plans, a late night visitor, scurrying around in the darkness for my luggage, an ambulance ride during heavy rains, carrying a drenched bag and saving the charts as I walked in knee deep water  would perfectly sum up my experience today.

The day started off with all of us taking a final tour of the village and bidding everyone good bye.   While chatting with a few women, one of them asked me suddenly, “Aapko yahan kaisa laga’? I told her the truth; this had been one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

She looked a little skeptical and said “Apke parivar ko darr nahi laga apko yahanpar bhejkar? Main kabhie bahar jati hun aur batati hun ki main Khurkheda se hoon, toh sabse pehele khayal unke dimag mein ata hain who hain Naxal. Apko darr nahi laga?”

Well it was scary. Since the day the field work list was put up, I was scared. Scared whether I would get a place to live, will the people be nice or wary of me, will there be a toilet to use or enough water to wash my clothes that fear made me carry 3 bags bursting to the themes. I didn’t know what to expect once I reached there. Will the CRPF be patrolling the streets? Or will there be a curfew. Will I find women on the streets? I literally let my imagination run wild throughout my journey. But somehow, it turned out to be more normal than my expectations.

With a smile I replied, “Laga toh sahi par yahan akar malum pada ki darne kit toh koi baat nahi”

She got back to her work.

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Before the Gram Sabha, 'Shri Gurudev Bhajan Mandal’ gave a performance.

After a frenzied morning, we had our Gram Sabha at 7. The numbers didn’t look promising, but I told myself that the people who are truly interested have turned up.  During the Gram Sabha, we highlighted some of the problems that we believed existed in the village and gave our suggestions. Some of them were well taken, like the one on having a career counseling workshop but the Up Sarpanch came and spoke to us personally about the problems of Public Toilets. We were told that the three Up Sarpanch had decided to set up Public Toilets as an experiment, but it had failed.

A few people had vandalized it and had stolen the doors before they opened it. In order to stop this, they had hired a watch man. Though vandalism had stopped; people did not know how to use toilets. They could not make water available in the toilets itself because of water shortage in the village.

Teaching children the importance of toilets right from the childhood would be a better way to ensure that people use toilets in the villages.