The Indian Girl Story Continues…

I wrote this story about the Indian girl who’s going to get married against her wishes. And it was really well-received. So I am continuing on the story.
The next morning, I woke up early. It was 430am. The sun wasn’t out yet. We lived in the slums in Chandipur, as most Dalit caste people did. We weren’t allowed to own any land. Most of us lived in this slum here and worked in that factory there. Generations on end of Dalit caste did the same thing. My brother was one of the first few to go to university and try to do something different.
There was no running water or toilets in our slum house. It was just a small structure of brick, and dried up cow manure. It kept the mosquitos away, my mother would say, every summer, when we reinforced the walls with more cow shit. Not a fun job, as I smelled like cow poop for the next few days, and everyone at school made fun of the ‘Dirty Untouchable.’
“Can’t you take a shower, Dalit?”
“You stink, Chamar.” Chamar was one of those delightful words that denoted the Dalit caste in the most cruel and despised way ever. I knew when I met someone who called me Chamar what kind of a human being they truly were. No matter how fancily dressed you might be, there are many who will call you horrible names while driving around in a Mercedes. You can’t hide who you truly are on the inside, and how black your soul is, by putting on some silk and gold on your body.
I woke up at 430am like most of the other younger girls in the village and the younger married women, for the same exact purpose. We had to use the toilet. It was dark enough right now, that we could go to the fields nearby and do our business there, without worrying about peeping Toms. My friend, Asha, was afraid of snakes. But I told her over and over again, it was better to be bitten by a snake, then be stared at by a disgusting peeping Tom.
I was sleeping under the stars, with my mother, on a cot. There was no mattress on the cot, just a little worn-out bedsheet, with red flowers on it, that my mother had received from her family when she was first married. It came with her dowry. She hasn’t had enough money to buy any new bedsheets for the past 17 years. I slept with my mother on one cot, and my father slept on the other.
My brother was the only one allowed to and privileged enough to sleep inside. He also was the only one with the fan directed on his body.
Most nights, it was too hot to sleep outside. The mosquitos especially loved my blood. My teacher had told me that they particularly loved biting people with Type O blood and of course, I had that blood type. They loved me so. Even though, I was being bitten like insane, and I was unable to sleep most nights, I had to stay deathly still. My mother was a light sleeper. She tossed and turned all night, because her limbs hurt her. Her job at the factory was quite labor-intensive. She had to work not only long hours at the factory, because my father got fired for being a drunk, but she had to come home and supplement her income with doing laundry for the rich folk. When she finally fell into bed in a stupor, she would complain of her calves, and her back hurting her. I tried to massage her feet and legs, but it wasn’t enough. She still cried in pain all night long, while my father lay on his cot in an alcoholic coma, oblivious to the world.
But once she fell asleep, I tried to stay still so I wouldn’t wake her up. It was so hard for her to fall asleep.
I hadn’t slept again this last night. I had been up the whole night, watching the stars move across the night sky. As soon as the roosters started crowing, I knew it was time to get up and go.
I moved off the cot as gently as I could.
I gathered some of water that I had pumped from the well last night before going to bed. I took some of it to clean myself up after my daily ablutions.
My friends at school had mocked me once. “What if you don’t need to pee or poo at 430am in the morning? What do you do then?”
If they only knew how easy it is to manipulate your body. My body knows that this is the only time that it gets to go to the toilet in an easy, unhurried fashion. So at 445am every morning, I am on the fields, in the squat position, my jug of water by my side, my long skirts gathered up around my waist. And like clockwork, I am able to go to the toilet every morning at the same time.
My body knows. As does the body of every other woman who comes to the fields at 430 to 5am in the morning.
Some women are lazier than me and they get up later. So they are doing their business in the fields, just as the first tendrils of morning light are showing up upon them. It is much harder to do your business in the fields, when you are so afraid of someone walking past at any second, especially a man and him seeing you in such an exposed position.
I made the mistake once of being late to the field. I was tired. I had had a long day. My brother, and father, and mother had all been sick with fever, and diarrhea. It was Typhoid, they said. But I thought it was something different. Everyone told me to give up on them. They were going to die, like so many had died in the Chandipur slum already. It was the season for Typhoid. Rainy season, combined with the proliferation of rats, and not enough water to clean up properly.
But I saw that my family had different symptoms somehow. I knew they would survive if I just paid attention to them. I took the week off from school, and spent every day, cleaning up after them, fetching clean water from the far-away well with the purer water, and feeding them as much as I could. It was an exhausting job to be sure. But the evening after the 7th day, when I saw that they were getting much better, I spent the evening in bed, sleeping and not moving. I was exhausted.
I slept for so long that I missed the morning 430am rooster call.
Never again, I told myself, as I had to go to the toilet under the roving and penetrating gaze of men who were doing their business as well around me, hidden but not quite hidden by the field.
It was 445am now, and I was waiting for Asha.
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