A salad from Bahadurgarh

“Hi guys, it’s 30 degrees Celcius today.”

“Fiuhhh..Thank God for the weather.”

We’ve never been grateful of having 30-degree-celcius-temperature when we were in Singapore. However, here in Bahadurgarh, 2 hours from New Delhi, this temperature is really a blessing for us. On our first day of our work last week, the auto-rickshaw driver dropped us at the gate of sector 17. We walked 1 km under the sun on the dusty road till we arrived at our office. That morning my friend found out that the temperature was 35 degrees and we encouraged each other, “No problem. We have not reached the climax.”

I opened my laptop and looked through the product lists. Four different excel files were opened at the same time. They were the product lists from 4 different years. After 1 week interning in this company, I finally familiarize myself with the product name and how they code the color of the bags and wallets. The company where we are interning at recycles waste to be fashion products. My job scope is to design the display room for these products. 

At 1pm, my eyes have become very tired. I walked to the pantry and warmed my food in the microwave. Today’s menu: instant pasta. Yes, it’s really instant. I just need to put the pasta in a pan filled with water, just like how you usually cook instant noodle. I plan to bring more instant pasta back to Singapore next month. While I was waiting for the pasta, I looked out through the window and saw people working at the construction next to our office. At the first few days in Bahadurgarh, I was very surprised to find out that women work as construction workers. Now seeing them carrying bricks or sacks of cement has been a normal scene in my life in India. I felt the breeze. Ahhh, 30-degree-celcius-temperature is just soo...wonderful. 

Suddenly my eyes met a young lady’s eyes at the second storey of the construction. How old is she? Perhaps 15? 17? I tried to smile and waved my hand. I felt awkward. This is stupid, I told myself. What am I doing??

To my surprise, she waved back and smiled widely. I made a bigger wave with my hands, with a wider smile too. I tried to recall all Hindi words that my friend taught me before I left Singapore. Well, I couldn’t remember what is “How are you?” The most important thing that I could remember was “Budget ke bahar hai” (It’s out of my budget), but of course, it’s not useful in this situation. I tried to recall the words on my mini phrase book that I bought with 10% discount. Thanks to my hippocampus cells, I managed to recall one sentence and shouted it out, “Ap kya nam hai???”

The girl shouted, “Sandhra. Mera nama Sandhra hai.” I shouted back, “Mera nam Ninda hai.” 

Ding.

My pasta was heated already. I took it out and waved to the girl, “Byeeeeeeeee!”

***

After a month living in Bahadurgarh, getting used to the heat and dust, getting used to the eyes looking at me as if I’m an alien, somehow I still could not go back to my ‘Bangalore-mood’ easily. Before we started our internship, we had 1 week workshop on entrepreneurship in Bangalore and in one week I was quickly known as a talkative person. However, here in Bahadurgarh, every time I reach our guest house which stands like a palace compared to the surroundings, I lose my mood to talk to my roommate. Initially I thought the heat absorbed my energy to talk, but after a while, I knew that I did not have chemistry with my roommate.

It’s very hard to talk about Sandhra to my fellow interns. There’s no way to explain my feeling, how I was so happy to have a new friend with only a sentence in Hindi (well, two sentences if including the answer: “Mera nam Ninda hai”). There’s no way to explain my happiness to wait for my lunch to be heated up every day and just stare at the opposite half-constructed factory with a big smile and sometimes waving hands. 

I’ve never thought that I’ll end up doing internship in Bahadurgarh. I have been wanting to go to Kanakagiri, 12 hours from Bangalore to do internship in an outsourcing company. I heard that the condition is very extreme. There’s no hot water and you can find scorpion under your bed in the hostel. When I got the email that I’ll be interning in a company which UP-cycles waste (without melting it down) to be various products, I was just...”Wow! Cool!”, especially when I found out that they hired rag pickers to work with them, I became so excited. This was exactly the reason why I really want to go to rural areas. I want to learn how I can improve the life of rag pickers in Indonesia and I’ve met some rag pickers in my hometown personally, so the visit to the slums in Bahadurgarh really brought back the memories that I had in the slum in my hometown.

There is only one main road in Bahadurgarh. There are lots of trucks because it is an industrial area. There was one morning when me and three other friends from Singapore were waiting for an auto-rickshaw. A car stopped and the man opened the window and offered us a ride. My friend innocently answered, “No, it’s okay. Thanks. We do not want to pay.” The man, almost laughed, replied, “No, I don’t need your money. Do you want to have a ride?” Anyway, we rejected his offer. It was very silly because the man was obviously one of the bosses in the factories around our office. His car came from New Delhi direction and we still said, “We do not want to pay,” because we were too cautious.

***

There was one day the stormy day could not cool down the discussion cum quarrel in our room. Well, it was not really our room. It was actually our boss’ room and we occupied her room because she didn’t come every day. That day even our supervisor did not come to the office. When he was not around, the whole factory slowed down. The admin and finance people were chatting outside and we, the interns, were just trying to do some work while our mind was counting how much time left till we could leave our office.

Silence.

My thermometer-friend, the one who always checked the temperature online, suddenly broke the silence. “It’s very sad to see the kids in the construction sites. It’s like a cycle. Some years from now they’ll end up as construction worker too. They should have had better things to do. Now they can’t even speak Hindi, they only speak the local language,right?” My ears were tickled by his statement. I asked softly, “What do you mean they should have had better things to do?”

“Well, at least the government should give them education, teach them basic stuff like Hindi or maths, not just let them play around the construction sites.” Another guy added on, “Ya. I feel pity for them, but I dunno what to do. If I give food, it’ll just be over in few days. Even to help them, we must think how to help in a sustainable way.” I nodded and replied, “Yah..but it’s very hard to ask the government do this kind of thing. It’s not like Singapore government. Where will they get the money?” My roommate replied, “They have money, as long as they do not corrupt the money.” I looked at her and said, “It’s always easier to say.” Then, I started digging my bag to find my earpieces. I found that the earpieces were quite useful to avoid debates with my fellow interns. I used the earpieces once when I couldn’t stand the girl’s paranoid feeling of infected with rabies because we played with the puppies outside our office. 

“Why do you always need to question other people? Sometimes we just want to talk about our opinion.” Okay...I heard the girl’s unhappy tone. “Well, what’s wrong with questioning? It’s good to raise questions. Kar Yen was not even offended by my question, why should you be unhappy?” Both Kar Yen (the thermometer-guy) and Ji Rong looked puzzled. Kar Yen tried to cool down the situation, “What I meant is the government should do something. And yah...I agree with you, it’s always easier to say because it’s very complicated.” I smiled with victory, but the girl stared at me and replied, “The problem with you is you question too much and you just can’t accept other people’s opinion.” I plugged my earpiece to my laptop, “And your problem is you always wear your Singapore’s government-spectacle here.” Then, my ears were filled with K-Pop songs.

***

Another awkward silence.

I ate the third banana because I desperately need fiber. I haven’t done my ‘business’ in toilet for three days. My roommate was chatting with her boyfriend on MSN and I was trying to write an article for the interns’ magazine. It was just an awkward silence.

I remembered Sandhra. Well, we never talked to each other again since the first day we waved and smiled to each other. However, she has become a new friend for me. Since then, every morning when I walk towards the office, I always look up to the construction site opposite my office. There I always find her and her mother, perhaps with also her aunty, and two kids who are most likely her sisters. I wave and smile at them and they smile back to me. That’s how we talk to each other.

I asked myself a question that I have not asked before. What did she have for dinner tonight? Did she and her family even have meal for dinner? After my internship is over, will I ever meet her again? What will she be in the future? Will she ‘just’ be a construction worker like what she is doing now? Ohhh.. then I realized that soon this area will be full of factories. She’ll just move to another construction site, right?

That night when I knelt down and prayed, I told God about Sandhra and her family. Please protect them, Lord. At that point, she was not ‘only’ a construction worker, but she’s my friend.

30 Aug 2011

Singapore

***

notes: I started writing this with the aim to try writing a short story, but it ended up just like my other posts. 

Hahaha....I wanted to write 6 pages, but I have not had the 'stamina' to write a proper 6-page-story.

Anyway, this story retelling really brings back the memories from Bahadurgarh. Somehow it's harder to write in Singapore and about my life in Singapore. I'm starting from scratch again.