I met Padma in outdoor classes where we were doing yoga-gymnastics, as they called it. She came to me to ask for the time and we ended up having coffee every afternoon after workout for almost two weeks. She had her own small production company for documentary movies and currently she was working on a project about traditional styles of embroidery developed by women for centuries in this area. She was born in Delhi in a middle class family. Her parents were Hindu, were quite liberal and had given her full freedom and independence since she was very young. She considered herself lucky and blessed. Her father was a literary critic and her mother a biologist. From the beginning of her life she had many questions concerning rituals, temple-going and pilgrim journeys. She earned a scholarship and for two years studied philosophy and religion in Tokyo, Japan. While there she embraced Buddhism, but she offered an explanation:
“The agnostic kind, the one that doesn’t recognize deities and expects you to go to the temple.”
I was staying in Kanpur, a city located on the banks of the Ganges River in the north-central state of Uttar Pradesh, a large industrial and educational center. She told me about Sankisa, a Buddhist pilgrimage site about 380 kilometers away in the district of Farukkhabad that I didn’t know existed. I was really curious and excited to visit the place so I planned a trip in the next few days.
One morning at 5 o’clock I left by cab to visit this village. The road was secondary, covered with broken pavement and holes. The car was moving slowly through never-ending plains and through secluded small villages and hamlets. People were sleeping outside on wooden beds in clusters of three-four in front of their mud huts, which were lined up along the road only a few feet away from it. It was the season of the sizzling humid summer right before the monsoons started. They were lying outside hoping to catch a breeze to cool down their sweating bodies. The kids were naked, the men had a piece of cloth around the thighs, dhoti, and the women were in saris. They weren’t worried about reptiles and serpents, as I always do. I had asked people repeatedly about this before and usu
ally the answer was that they wouldn’t climb up the bed and the rare unfortunate accidents must have happened when the long brade of a female fell on the ground, the snake used it to get into her bed and if she turned then in her sleep the snake bit her. Many of them were poisonous, of course. This is the reason why they never slept on the ground outside. They always placed their cots in front of the house, not in the back, because in this way, they were in touch with life coming from outside of the village and, most importantly, the entrance was protected and no one could enter unnoticed. I wondered how they were able to sleep with all the humming of the insects around, the screeches of the animals and birds, the honking of the horns on the road, and the heat, but I realized that people here considered themselves an intrinsic part of nature and this was how they lived – in harmony with their surroundings, in the same way that the buffalo is not disturbed by the flies around him and the birds on his back.
I was traveling for the first time in the countryside so early in the morning. It was daybreak and the view was breathtaking. A splash of bright amber-ruby light was spilling out on either side of the far dark horizon as if a magical artist was adding layers of mixed hues of blazing watercolors on a canvas with wide brush strokes. Then, it seemed, he had touched up the silent branches of the trees with the golden rays of the rising sun, and next, he had gradually illuminated one side of the rooftops over the quiet huts, and, finally, poured light onto the silent backyards and the desolate plains. I was sitting in the front seat of the car, hypnotized by this canvas that was slowly changing in a miraculous sequence. And then the day was born before my eyes.
As the car continued moving, I followed with curiosity everything that was going on outside and kept thinking that there is no concept of privacy here. The Hindi language itself does not have a word with a socio-cultural dimension of this nature. There are words that mean ‘loneliness’ as an emotional-psychological state and ‘emptiness’ as a physical condition. People here are forced by their life circumstances to develop different attitudes towards the body – noises, smells or substances coming out are natural. Human relationships are uncomplicated from this point of view. A person is never alone and cannot be alone. The car passed by water pumps built close to the road. Each village had at least one of these in addition to a few houses with wells. A man all covered with soap foam was bathing; a couple of boys were washing their hands and face, pumping water for each other; a mother was bathing her kid, after having finished her own bathing behind the doors of her home. The new day opened with a refreshed and purified beginning.
The uneven road was snaking slowly in front of us. The sun’s fire was already searing the sky. The villagers were up. I heard the clamor and ringing of tiny bells and saw people approach their little sanctuary, touch the dust around the feet of their deity and pray before they started the new day. Others went inside their thatched-roof huts where I could imagine them performing their morning ritual in front of the small domestic shrine. The hut was made of mud with a roof of thatched hay without a window or a door that could be shut, but somewhere inside every hut is a tiny altar decorated with at least seven objects needed for the daily worship, puja, or the ritual of invocation, offering and prayer. The image or the statue is very important as it symbolizes the god’s manifestation and through it the worshipper establishes a connection with the god. There is also a small bell and with its chime the devotee invites the god to visit the home and to accept the offerings. A small oil lamp is lit and held in both hands to bring light to the altar in a clockwise circular motion. A few incense sticks are also lit for purity and fragrance. A small metal bowl contains water used to wash the image or the statue. Afterwards it is adorned with flower garlands and fabric is wrapped around it. Offerings are left on the altar, including beetle nut and leaves, fruits, such as a coconut, apple, or lemon, sometimes a few coins, and rice colored with vermillion, saffron powder, and turmeric. All this symbolizes the god being asked to bless and protect the household. A small box containing sandalwood or turmeric paste is opened to apply a tilak mark on the forehead of the god’s image and of the devotee, indicating the spot between the two eyebrows where wisdom in a latent form is believed to be hiding. The OM is important to pronounce, as it signifies the vibration of the universe, which appeared during the act of creation. The worshipper also invokes the deity with a series of epithets, prays through songs, called bhajans, and chants sacred formulae, mantras. Then, sometimes the devotee drinks a sip from the offered water and touches six places of his/her body to denote the god’s presence in it, then takes the food, which has been blessed, and distributes it to all family members. Then, the cleansing ritual follows by taking dips in the river or the pond belonging to the temple, or wherever possible.
Around 8 o’clock men and women were already in the fields walking behind buffalos pulling wooden plough. Others were working on road construction sites. Many could be seen dawdling at the tiny roadside stalls, sipping tea. Each hamlet had one or two of these wooden shacks. In the front, on a brick fireplace, the tea was brewing in a huge kettle and with a big ladle the shopkeeper poured it into small clay cups without handles, like miniature flower pots, which, after the customer was finished, were thrown in a garbage box on the corner. Plastic cups were not used since they would be far more costly than the regular shipments of handmade cups made by the nearest potter. I had seen how they worked hunkered down over the spinning wheel, first making the tall, round vase-like shape and then with a piece of string skillfully cutting up each evolving cup that they placed on a board until it filled up, making about a hundred cups per hour.
The day was advancing. Women were coming out to the water pumps to wash the dishes after breakfast and a little later they were in the rice fields hunched over with the end of their saris tucked between the legs while their kids were jumping around nearby. The older kids were at the water pumps filling up round-bellied metal vessels and when full they put one on top of their heads and the other they would grab with a hand around the neck of the pot, go home and come again when more water was needed.
In the rural areas you rarely see vessels or buckets with handles, let alone wheel-barrows. People here carry fruits and vegetables, soil or grains in woven baskets or metallic pots. A piece of cloth was twisted in the shape of a pretzel and placed on the head, and the basket or pot would be placed on it. This is a common scene at the site of road constructions – people and baskets. One laborer is crouched in the dirt digging with a small spud, another collects and loads dirt by hand into the basket, a third one lifts up the basket, takes a few steps to where the ground is cleaner to walk and places it on the head of a fourth one, who, in turn, walks several yards, where a fifth one picks it up and brings it to the sixth, who throws out the contents over a heap of stone chips and dirt, and the seventh one waits for him to take the empty basket back to the first laborer. They are all part of an efficient labor chain that allows them, while waiting for their turn, to drag a smoke and chat with the few villagers who have come to watch. Work never stops this way and replacements are easily made.
Similarly, many activities are broken down into a series of steps performed by a group of paid employees. For instance, if there are no customers in the store, the shopkeeper might be sleeping on the floor or on a couple of chairs placed next to each other. However, the second you enter, five or six people instantly surround you, each with a distinctive role. One welcomes you and takes you to the second, who is the main salesperson or shopkeeper, the third one receives his orders and starts taking down merchandise from the shelves, the fourth one brings whatever is not available in the shop from the storage room in the back or in the basement, or from another shop nearby, the fifth one shows up with a cold soft drink like Limca, or hot tea, the sixth one takes your money, the seventh is the cash-machine operator. It’s possible I may have even skipped someone.
The situation in the hotels is not all that different. I am not referring to the five stars ones; they are like anywhere else in the world, except that the uniforms are quite a bit more colorful. However, the services in the smaller hotels are executed as a series of sub-activities. Someone runs out to open the car or just greet you while you are getting off from the rickshaw, the second one picks up your luggage, if you have any, or just carries your personal bag, the third one is assigned to open the door for you, the fourth one receives you at the entrance and escorts you to the desk, where he announces your room number if you have already checked in, and the receptionist hands your room key over to someone else who, in turn, takes you to your room and opens the door for you. If you order food, at least two will come, one to hold the tray, the other to lean over the coffee table, serve everything, and to ask what else you need. During the day there are at least four or five assistants sitting and chatting in a corner on each floor, ready to dash forward when service is required.
Homes are organized in much the same way. There are servants for all possible purposes. Here is what I saw in the house of an owner of a shop for ritual objects. He had a wife and two kids. His house had three rooms with whitewashed empty walls that had brownish spots, a dirty floor, a few old plastic chairs, a couple of wall-niches with a couple of big bundles of clothes in them, and a big, square wooden bed in each room. The house had a yard-like open space right in the center, around which all the rooms were located. There were no windows, but the doors opening into this courtyard let in some light and air. However, the problem was that I was there in the middle of a scorching summer, when the humidity level was very high and when there was absolutely no breeze. Furthermore, the house was right next to an open sewer which emitted unbearable stench into the whole neighborhood. In addition, the family owned a couple of buffalos which were kept in a shed behind the house. The stink from the animal manure along with the exhaust fumes coming from the busy street nearby, mixed with the reek from the sewer, formed a thick haze that got trapped and sealed in this inner yard. I tried breathing with my mouth but that didn’t help. I felt as though a chunk of filthy air was stuck in my throat and was slowly developing into an even more sordid and nauseating taste and no matter how many bottles of water I tried to flush it out with, the memory of it was so strong that it stayed with me for several days. The owner of this house did not let his wife work outside the house. She was supposed to take care of the kids and oversee the household chores. 
A washer-man came in the morning to collect and drop the laundry, followed by the flower girl, who brought the jasmine garlands for the daily puja. A cleaning lady came afterwards to sweep and mop the floors, another one did the dishes, a fifth person took care of the buffalos, a sixth one collected the dung. The man’s ceiling fan broke down, his little son ran somewhere and two minutes later a man armed with a screwdriver and pliers appeared at the door.
I once talked to a guy in the so called ‘garbage business’ in a big city and it seemed that it was also efficiently organized into sub-units. He told me that the dealer, (he used the English word), had an entire network of assistants. One team collected and rummaged through the garbage bags thrown out from the windows and balconies of the residential buildings. The stuff they found they placed in different piles: ‘to be fixed’, ‘to be used for parts’, ‘good material’, and ‘sellable’. Then, each pile was handled by an assigned group which took care of the inventory as required. I actually talked to the ‘good material’ specialist, who would look with his buddies at the selected items and figure out whether a particular piece of metal, wire, plastic, and carton could be used by the ‘to be fixed’ department. The main dealer, who was considered rich by the residents dumping the garbage and by his employees, had a dukan, i.e. a shop – a shack built against a fence or wall, made of two upright metal pipes in the front and a large plastic covering stretched over the top. And he had servants there to bring him tea or a bottle of cold Limca from time to time.