First Day on the Job (Originally written Sept. 7)

I just got back from my first day on the job!  This morning, my grandma, grandpa (Pop), and I went out to the slum, or "basti."  

I forgot how thrilling the drive there is.  Chandigarh was designed on a grid, which has really impacted the culture of the city.  Everything is more spread out, perhaps a bit less chaotic.  It’s a nice city, but doesn’t meet certain expectations of how an “Indian City” will be.  Five to ten minutes from Pop’s house, right outside the city border, the grid dissipates and culture shifts.  Taking the right turns brings you to Janta Colony, where my grandfather’s project is established.  Twisty streets pop up, and little pockets of shops line the uneven road.  Lean animals sit in empty plots, and if you’re lucky, a cow might block your path for a minute or two.  This is the India a visitor imagines, and I really value the opportunity I’ve been given to experience it.

Every morning, the staff does a series of exercises.  A portion are done on the roof - for a bit we even get to use broken bricks as weights - which would be lovely, if the outdoors didn’t feel like Satan’s sauna.  Then the Health Promoters prepare paperwork for their day of house visits.  My grandma and I sat in on this, and the women told me I look like “Kat Weenslet from the Holeywood movie ‘Titaneec.’”  Some of them pulled up pictures on their phones of me from my last visit in 2011.  They were embarrassing photos.  We all shared a cup of delicious sugary tea before embarking on our day of house visits.

The health promoters always spend the morning checking on the families they council.  Today, I accompanied Sangeeta, a beautiful young woman who is the only health promoter today to wear leggings (as opposed to salwars) and active, Choco-style sandals.  I can’t understand what she says to passersby in the slum, but it seems like she’s often wittily teasing them.

Today, Sangeeta was meeting many new families she’d be advising.  Fortunately for me, several of these homes had young babies.  In one of the first houses (huts? Rooms?  I’ll describe the housing later at some point), there was a sweet tiny little baby boy that I couldn’t keep my eyes off of.  He was so little!  If I’d had to guess, I’d have thought he was a month or two old.  Three at the very most.  His thin wrists and ankles were wrapped in strings of beads, and even though they were incredibly small, his little shorts slipped down a few times revealing his bare bottom.  The mother looked very young herself, probably in her late teens.  There was another woman there too, probably the grandmother, who held the baby much of the time.

After 5 minutes of listening to Sangeeta speak with the woman in Hindi, she told me that I could hold the baby.  The grandmother held him out to me and I could have started crying.  I got to hold him for the rest of our stay (another 5 or 10 minutes).  There were times that he looked as if he might start fussing, but it was like he didn’t quite have the strength to do so.  It was heartbreaking.  He stared and stared at me while I cooed to him.  The two women said I will be a good mother.

When we left the house, I asked Sangeeta how old the boy was.  “Five months,” she said.  I couldn’t believe it.  When Ansel was that age, he was army-crawling around the living room.  I don’t think this baby could have even intentionally moved his head.  Sangeeta explained that the mother is having trouble producing breast milk, which is making the baby very weak.

I can’t even think of anything to follow up that story with, it’s just so sad.

Later, I saw a green parrot in a too-small cage, a newborn wearing eye makeup (as they all do), and a half-naked baby with a cleft pallet.  I got to hold him too.