TIME OUT:AS AN ANTIDOTE to financial ruin and unpredictable weather, I have bailed out for a gap year in the middle of the Rajasthan desert, living in a mud hut. My neighbours are nomads, tribal people and snake charmers, most of whom live in makeshift tents. The local commute is by camel.
I am in India as part of a multi-national volunteer group from Scandinavia, Holland, Germany, England and Ireland aged between 19 and 74. Although most of the volunteers are 50 plus, they are energetic, enthusiastic and committed to the work. We are involved in a number of projects and groups. The “grown-up” group (not mine) teaches pre-school. Its members have brought books and educational materials. One volunteer from England is a top-level educational trouble-shooter who is taking unpaid leave to be here. Another is a film producer making a career change. There are retired people and working people, nurses, doctors, administrators, teachers and journalists taking time out to do this.
The grown-up group stands out. To the amusement of the locals, the women have adopted Indian dress. They float around in billowing saris of many sizes, which have some trouble staying on. Alas, only Indian women seem to be able to wear the sari well. My volunteer group follows a more liberal line, but it certainly falls within the strictest definition of modesty. No revealing shorts, skirts or even sleeveless tops. In the land of the Kama Sutra, the dress code is surprisingly conservative.
Our group is restoring a crumbling day-care centre, scraping and filling walls and eventually painting a cheerful mural. Tiny tots with enormous eyes wander about under our rickety bamboo ladders, sticking small fingers in fresh cement, asking: “Apka naam kya hei?” (what is your name?). They never tire of the question, nor of repeating the answers: “Anguuus, Nikkii, Hilly”. They hoot with amusement at the oddness of these names.
As the mural progresses, mothers, grandfathers, aunties and cousins arrive to view the peacocks, tigers, parrots and butterflies that are appearing on the walls. The centre becomes almost too crowded to work in, but the families take no notice. They are here to stay.
After lunch, which is inevitably dahl, rice, cauliflower and chapattis, we get down to the business of street theatre. In India, theatre is an educational tool, used to raise issues of social awareness. Rajasthan is one of the poorest places in India, with lower than average literacy rates, but in 2006 the state received a Unesco award for its commitment to improving literacy.
Street theatre is an important aid to literacy. It is a popular form of entertainment in an area where groups still gather together socially to watch television.
Under the guidance of our Indian director, volunteers will perform a play about child marriage – and it will be in Hindi. Child marriage is illegal in India but it is rife in Rajasthan, as are the practices of selling off daughters and indenturing children for labour.
I play Mrs Mangu, mother of 11-year-old Shanta, a bright schoolgirl who is forced to abandon her books to marry the elderly suitor who will pay her parents lots of rupees. Shanta rails against her fate, but in vain. By Act Two, Shanta has already had a seriously disabled baby and her husband is violent. By Act Three, she has collapsed and died in childbirth. The parents wring their hands and wonder why this has happened. Their college-educated son steps forward with the explanation. “Take vitamins during pregnancy,” he exhorts, “also calcium and iron. Above all,” he warns, “do not marry until you are at least 18.”
In rehearsal, we westerners stagger about awkwardly in our saris and turbans practising our phonetically written Hindi lines. In spite of good intentions, the play has all the elements of a farce. A mispronounced word can change the whole meaning of the piece. We are very nervous.
The performance eventually takes place on open ground in the nearby village of Bilona. Farmers wearing traditional dhotis arrive from near and far with their wives and children, up to 700, creating a sea of colourful saris, turbans and robes. The play begins and the crowd quietens. We proclaim our Hindi lines to a mixture of laughter, silence and applause. Afterwards the audience crowds around good-naturedly, although we notice a few dark looks from some of the male elders.
What had started out as a light-hearted project for us becomes serious when a group of elderly women come forward touching our feet and thanking us. Through an interpreter they tell us that this had been their story. Married off at the age of eight or 10, their lives have been ones of drudgery and servitude. The women desperately want a different future for their granddaughters. They seem moved by the play and we feel privileged to have been part of it. It is important to note that this project is 100 per cent Indian, run by a group called Idex, which follows government educational policy, and we volunteers happily constitute a free source of labour.
As news of further financial meltdown and corruption in high places reaches us in the desert in Rajasthan, we shake our heads and join the impromptu concert going on outside. Here, among the tents of the nomads and Adivasis (original inhabitants in Sanskrit), a snake-charmer and trumpeter is entertaining his neighbours. He is joined by other musicians using drums and bowls. The tune is fast and rousing and a singer joins in with a nasal drone reminiscent of an Irish sean nós. A man starts to dance, swirling about in a circle, arms outstretched. A woman gets to her feet and the man retires. She is dressed in vivid yellow and green, her arms and ankles laden with silver jewellery, which clinks and clanks as she spins. Other women and children are now dancing. Everyone claps in time to the beat and someone signals for us, the volunteers, to join in.
Our hosts are among the poorest of the poor in the land of Slumdog Millionaire. Their homes are made of plastic or mud. The children run about almost naked and they herd goats from the age of three. The monochrome desert is the backdrop against which the women's reds and greens and blues and yellows create a tumult of joyful colour. The men lead their camels to the next stopping post. Financial meltdown is irrelevant here. Life has gone on like this since biblical times and it shows every sign of continuing. Today they are here with camels, tents and makeshift houses. Tomorrow they will be gone; the embers of their fires the only evidence of their stay.
You may volunteer for a stay of weeks, months or years, it’s up to you. The work is hard but the rewards are great. As we return to our mud huts, leaving the Adivasis to their music, Nikki, a 24-year-old English nurse, sums it up: “This certainly beats lying on a beach.”
Hilary Orpen went to India with Real, Gap Year for Grown Ups, see www.gapyearforgrownups.co.uk. She got a round-the-world ticket from Trailfinders Dublin, for €1,929, which includes stops in India, New Zealand, Fiji, Australia and Bhutan