Every day as I leave my house, I shut a black metal gate behind me. The rusty clank of the fence has become a sound buried in my mind, an orchestra that plays outside my window countless times per day, symbolizing a divide between my home and the rest of Bagru. You never know who, or what, will come through the gate, or what you’ll see on the other side.
As I turned around yesterday morning and closed the latch, my senses were acute and mindful of the morning’s surroundings: my ears, conscious of the jingle of the fence, my nose, stimulated by my neighbor’s chai and dung below me, and my skin, embracing the breeze at dawn – the best time of day, before the day’s intense heat.
When I looked up, my eyes locked with a teenage girl about 50 yards in the distance, no more than 16 years old. She was standing in the middle of field of debris – an area where I, along with the rest of the community, dumps their trash. Her back was turned to a stonewall that marks the boundary of Chhipon Ka Mohalla – the “printers quarters” of Bagru, an area that has become a famous snapshot of hand-block printing around the world. Pigs and dogs circled the girl like a hungry pack as she disengaged from our stare, looked down at the ground, lifted her dress with embarrassment, and assumed a squat position. Un-amused, I continued on my way.
Two minutes later, I turned a corner into a narrow alley, nearly tripping over an even younger girl around ten years old. Her jeans were at her ankles, and her dark, Indian eyes gazed up at me with disturbance. Her crouched position placed her feet on edge of the road, with her rear sinking down into an open irrigation gutter that runs alongside the street. As I rounded the corner, she stood, pulled her pants up, and put her head down in shame. Pretending I saw nothing, I strode forward; then, out of my peripheries, I could see the girl pulling down her pants to finish her business.
My day carried on as usual. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think much of these occurrences. Sadly, many do not have proper toilets in Bagru. . Instead, the streets, bushes, and hidden alleyways are the most available bathrooms for many. This includes all ages – from toddlers to the elderly. Such is life, and these instances happen every day.
We (Bagru Textiles) have had multiple clients and tourists visit recently, all of them hailing from the Western world. A few of them saw these acts of public defecation like I described, and immediately asked me about it.
“Are they…? Actually…?” My answer, bluntly, was something close to “Yeah, they’re shitting in the street. Is there a problem?”
The simple answer is yes, it there a problem. Yet, it wasn’t until I said these types of comments out loud, did I realize how numb I was to the poverty surrounding me. Foolishly, but perhaps justifiably, I’ve been defending the repulsively of these images in my mind; after all, I’ve had my own fair share of outdoor bathroom experiences while I’ve been here – indeed, this is India – it happens. And furthermore, I know plenty of people in Bagru—happy people—that do not have toilets. Who says they need them? Here, I can’t ignore my own ignorance; it’s neglectful and misguided thinking.
I’ve never been close to living in such financial deprivation that I cannot afford a toilet or sanitary living conditions. Previously, I’ve never known anyone who has even come close to such a state of poverty. But now, some of the students I teach have to squat on the side of the road. In some parts of Bagru, I’ve even seen children bathing in these sewage gutters. My stream-of-consciousness lead me to believe this is just the way things are, and not much can be done.
To stay brief, but also offer a response to these observations:
I feel intensely bothered by my numbness to these unmistakable demonstrations of poverty. Indeed, I am surprised and concerned about it, but I am also satisfied with my level of comfort.
To combat poverty, one cannot be captivated by its aesthetics, nor startled by its afflictions. In contrast, there must be a level of comfort with inequality, a certain type of comfort that allows you to live in and amongst it, but also observe through a critical lens.
It is this thorny relationship that I am struggling to find in Bagru, treading closer to the acceptance of poverty itself, while maintaining a careful eye, constantly dreaming up new ways to improve, build, and raise this community up. To be fair, I myself am not living a lavish lifestyle of luxury, but at least I have a toilet.
Certainly values play a strong role in poverty. From my (admittedly unqualified) perspective, the lack of sanitary practices appears to be low on the priority list for people in Bagru. Of course, the deeper issue here is education; if people don’t understand why a toilet is useful or beneficial, there isn’t a reason to invest in one.
Unfortunately, even a donation of 1,000 toilets will not, and cannot, fix this issue. Its roots run deeper, longer, and require more than just monetary change.
Now, every time I hear the sound of the metal gate, I know – at least in part – the types of realities that exist for this destitute community. The question remains, how should I feel about it, and what am I going to do?