January 20, 2006

Long day’s journey into night...

Friday and we have decided to leave earlier from the hotel in Pondicherry, in order to meet some members of the Cuddalore Central Rotaract Club. Headed by Shanmugam (who incidentally was just named Rotaractor of the Year for his District) Bouvana (Shanmugam’s sister) and Anita, we expected to see the same group of Rotaractors as had been working with us on and off for the week. As we approached the turnoff from the main road leading between Pondicherry and Cuddalore, which would lead us down a winding secondary road to Pannithittu Village, we were pleasantly surprised to see four or five more members who were coming to volunteer for the day. They boarded our traveling motor coach and off we set down the road, taking time to introduce each other. These volunteers were all students at the local university, majoring in a variety of fields of study, and all eager to follow our lead in the construction process. Kumar drove our coach to the side of the road and parked it beneath an enormous ficus tree, which cast shade over it and a good part of the street for the greater part of the day. There were a few familiar faces of the local villagers to smile and greet us either with Namaste or Vanacum, depending if they were Hindus or Tamils. A few hens scattered as we walked through the entrance to “our” village and some of the laborers looked up and smiled as we approached.

Amir was waiting for us to direct us to what we might be doing for the morning, we al the time hoping that it was not confined to the ever-popular brick line! It seemed that great progress had been made during the course of the week: septic tanks were being installed with lines leading from the lavatories and toilets of each unit; corrugated cement roofs being lifted and attached to the frames to provide shade to the front porches; wooden framed screens being installed in the windows; and exterior stairs leading to the terrace roofs being smoothed out. Things were really shaping up!

We walked through the sandy soil, past the diesel powered cement mixer, which stood petrified in the center of one of the garden areas, as a monument to the fact that one should always hose down the mixer and clear out all portions of the concrete mixture before leaving it for the night. One young lad was chipping away at caked on concrete, hoping beyond all hope that he could free this behemoth from its frozen state. Not to be…

We walked down to the area we had called home for the week, and set our sacks containing bottled water and packets of electrolyte powders under the shade of a palm tree. Looking toward the sea, we were able to catch a glimpse of a few fishing boats from the village, along with one fishing raft. The fishermen were letting out their nets for the day’s catch. Well, what was it to be???? Brick lines, hods of concrete, perhaps painting some whitewash onto the walls where the electrical service had been brought in and concrete patching had been completed? You guessed it… more bricks. We noticed that the pile from which we had been taking our bricks and passing them along the line to the masons, had not diminished, but rather increased in size to almost double from where we had left it the previous afternoon. We had seen a truck carrying a load of bricks coming down the road as we had left the day before, but never expected that the gift on board be for us!

Mark called out, “Right everybody! Let’s get into proper formation and begin moving some of these bloody bricks!” Some of the “newbies” had to be guided into place and the passing began. There is a certain rhythm that helps to move things along and helps to keep a good steady pace. Aerobics class was never like this, but the bending and catching and turning and tossing certainly could do wonders for one’s love handles. Looking at the students, however, this was NOT a consideration. Melpo, Mark and I found that we were actually in better condition for this kind of work, maybe simply because we had been doing it all week. I had brought a couple of pair of work gloves with me from home, but Melpo had no gloves, so she asked if she might borrow my socks to use as gloves to protect her hands. I obliged, and the bricks began their journey from huge neatly stacked pile, to not-so-neatly stacked smaller piles for the tenders to pass on to the masons.

We worked for forty minutes and then took a ten-minute break for re-hydration and just taking rest in the shade. The sun was quite hot even by mid-morning, but I found wearing a baseball cap was more bother than it was worth. We did have some sunscreen we applied, but that soon wore off with sweat. “Okay, right! Back to work,” Mark called out encouragingly. Amir came and suggested that Anita and Bouvana might prefer to paint, rather than pass bricks, and we certainly missed having them in the line, as each of us had to toss and catch with longer spans between us. A new challenge and a new rhythm, but we managed. We worked for nearly four hours and then sent Shanmugam and Melpo and one other Rotaractor to the coach to have Kumar drive them into Cuddalore to pick up lunch for the young people. We three had decided that rather than taking so much time to travel back and forth to town and to eat in a restaurant, we could accomplish a great deal more by partaking of two bananas each, which Ragubabu had provided us from the hotel, along with one or two high protein bars I had brought along with me from home. While the others were buying lunch, the remaining group worked to move smaller piles of bricks closer to where the masons would need them – actually inside the soon-to-be rooms in the housing units.

Lunch arrived and the Rotaractors disappeared into one of the not-quite-finished units and had their lunch. Mark, Melpo and I ate our power lunches and then decided to walk to the beach for a stroll and possible some wading. We walked along a lane, beneath some towering palms and found a break in the thorny fencing protecting some planting of baby palms near the beach, which would eventually serve to shade others, as well as to prevent erosion. We arrived at the beach and Melpo spotted a log, which would accommodate the three of us. There was a fairly strong fishy odor wafting down the beach, which we discovered later was produced by tens of thousands of small silvery fish, laid out to dry in the sun. Dried fish is a staple in the local diet, if one could only get past the overpowering stench. We turned away from that area of the beach and walked along until we reached the log.

We sat down, took in the view and then took off our shoes and walked down to where the waves were lapping onto the shore. We stepped into the water and waded out to knee deep, and were pretty impressed with the strength of the undertow. With the rise and fall of one wave, we found our feet were buried beneath several inches of sand, and also found it very difficult to maintain our balance.

We stayed at the beach for about a half hour and then wandered back to the work site, listening as Mark regaled us with stories of when he has a young lad, living in India. Mark was born in Mumbai (ne Bombay) and had spent his early years in Salem, where he attended the same school where PDG Purushotaman had gone. He told of poisonous snakes and how as youngsters, fear seldom played a role, when flicking a snake with a stick.

When assessing the jobs for the afternoon, it was determined that shorter distances had to be covered, so I volunteered to carry hods of concrete on my head for the afternoon. We worked until well after five and were pretty exhausted by the time we left. Piling back into the coach, we headed toward Cuddalore, dropping off the Rotaractors downtown and then heading north to the Hotel Annamalai – our oasis in Pondicherry. Upon arrival, we gingerly disembarked and climbed the three steps to the front door, where a smartly dressed doorman saluted us and opened the door. Mind you, I doubt if we had to have opened the door ourselves, not any one of the three of us could have done much more than fall against the door, praying that it would have fallen open under the weight of our body mass.

After a hot bath or shower, we all met in the lobby and ventured into the “veg” restaurant in the hotel, and enjoyed a fine meal. We decided however, that before we fell asleep in our dessert plates, we ought to go to our rooms and sleep peacefully, anticipating our last day of work.