And then one day...

I could tell you i dreamt of a vulture eating a rat and interpreted it as my doom, or got a warning from Santa Claus that i was in his 'naughty' list too early in the year... But nope, none of it happened... I jus woke up one day n thought "hmm i feel lousy.. i need to save the planet or something"... Explains why when the college wanted help this Sunday (today) for a disability survey in this village called Udyavar , I volunteered.
Only after mine n a few other names were carved in stone did they tell us they needed us at the college by 7:30 AM on a SUNDAY in formals looking like its-not-a-sunday....."We're doing a good job, counting the number of disabled people in a village is much more productive than staying buried under your comfy quilt till after 10 dreaming n re-dreaming a dream just to avoid reality after a ridiculously hectic week.... WE ARE DOING GOOD" is what we told ourselves....
My conscience (the bitch is too loud! so much for 'tiny voice in your head') dragged me outta bed..Next thing i remember is me in the stationary bus, half my brain suffering a splitting headache while the other half was planning how best to kill the squeaky girl behind me who was conversing with an idiot who made her talk...
The bus started to move at 9 am, an hour later than scheduled... we reach the place, there was a small ceremony of lighting the lamp n a couple of people gave us speeches in Kannada nobody really understood followed by breakfast. We were split up n each one got an Anganwadi woman (local community workers) sent with them to make sure we dint get lost in the district.
Ours was one popular lady who wanted to get things done well and ASAP...So she'd take us to everybody, have a quick chit chat n get them to answer our questionnaire.. n if thr wasn anybody home she knew everything abt them so it dint matter :)...
Something we all noticed was, every house had a dog..EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM no matter how tiny or big the house was... n not those cute coochy moochy poochy pomeranians or somethin, the proper hatta-khatta desi kuttas whose bark will connect ones ear to their urinary bladder... Lucky for my mates, im one helluva charmer so i was cooooooooooooooool with them around 8) :P. Everytime we got lost in the jungle we'd follow the sound of a bark somewhr far far away to get us back to civilisation.
By noon we had knocked on doors of about 100 homes n were so exhausted, i was gonna have a heat stroke i think. Anyway the next house we went to this old lady invited us in n we politely refused as we had many more places to go to n couldn afford spending time in peoples homes. She offered to get us something to drink n i was imagining a big glass of iced tea with a slice of lemon dangling frm the brim, shining like amber as sun rays passed through it (hey i was dehydrated so excuse the hallucinations will ya :P )... or even a simple glass of cold water...THEN the nice lady came out with a big glass of hot milk fresh from the udders of their cow... she actually said that with a glow on her face that would make my "sun-rays-thru-amber-like iced tea glass look like a chunk of coal"... now how could one refuse something like that even though one has never ever had hot milk without sugar (or boost..secret of my energy), and one couldn stop thinking abt the 'fresh from the cows udders' fact that made ones intestinal bacteria ill.. ALAS what one mother whos known her daughter for 21 years couldn accomplish, a simple village lady did in a matter of 15 minutes! :O..
Moving on...We were energised by the wholesome milk we said our goodbyes n continued our journey across Udyavar... now i know Kannada and so does the Community worker but somehow while conversing with me she'd forget that fact every 15 mins (i've recently been Ghajini'fied, if it were Goa i'd have advised her tatooing...) n start conversing with me in broken english, hindi or very slowly yet loudly spoken Kannada...
We were walking throught fields n this woman kept telling us to watch out for the "kaantes" ('thorns' in hindi) so we were keeping our eyes on the ground... After a while she started gettin really panicky about the whole thorns thing, i wanted to tell her to relax n that we were brave babes who can kick the thorns' ass MATRIX style.. so i look up to tell her that n there i see her resting her right elbow on her left palm, forearms pointing to the sky n cupped palm waving at me while she continued her "kaante" chant n then, like a tequila shot it hit my brain.... IT WASN THE THORNS SHE WAS WORRIED ABOUT... THE FIELD HAD SNAKES THAT WOULD "KAANTE" (also 'bite' in hindi) US IF WE DINT GET OURSELVES OUTTA THERE! Boy Oh Boy! that was such a filmy scene i assure you.. the rush of information, the camera closes in on my face emphasizing my pupil dialation, sudden pull back of the camera and there we were standing right in the middle of the 4 fields surrounded by god alone knows how many snakes...
If it were an animated movie somewhere there would be a handsome topless man, strangely hairless, with perfect abs, toned pects swinging on coconut tree leaves (we're in south india so lets not get ahead of ourselves) yelling from the bottom of his throat that would make the birds fly away, and he'd be coming for us damsels in distress (okay i think im dehydrated right now hehe)... But none of it was gonna happen so we took the longest strides n got to safety.

Finally at about 1:30 pm we were done with 170 homes we were allotted n finally got on to local buses that took us back to Manipal, and in the next hour we were in an air conditioned cafe waiting for our fish n chips to arrive.

Even though we had to go through it all on a Sunday instead of lazing at home or hitting the beach... this was one Sunday that will stay in my memory like a laminated picture and always make me smile and my intestinal bacteria squirm...