Untouched

For the last few weeks, I've been working in an office with two other people. AJWS says we shouldn't use the names of our coworkers in our blogs, so I asked one of them what name I could use for her. She chose Annie, which is short for Angela, her baptismal name (she's a Christian). Her real name is much more Indian-sounding, though. You'll have to take my word on that.

I can’t think of a day since I’ve been here when she didn’t announce her arrival in the morning by bursting through the door singing and dancing. She constantly has a smile on her face, even though she is busy doing work everyday for which she is terribly overqualified. For the past several months, she’s been scanning surveys on untouchability [the practice of treating Dalits--"untouchables"--as pariahs]. The work is basically mindless, but requires careful attention to minute details on the forms. Annie is a college graduate in mechanical engineering, speaks fluent English, has been in charge of a bunch of machines in a factory, has taught Computer Assisted Design and Videography/Photography, and could no doubt be making much more money working somewhere else.

She’s always joking with me, teaching me things about Gujarati culture or about this organization, and spends time helping me with something or other nearly every day.

Yesterday, she told me that she’d been the victim of an act of untouchability the day before. Annie lives in a building on the edge of campus with her husband, the organization’s chief engineer. Some of the married staff live in this building. Anyway, I’ll tell the story in her voice.

“Yesterday I was outside doing some laundry, hanging it up on the lines. The weather was cool and I was feeling good. Three women from the village were walking by and went to take some water from the faucet. I had a jug of water already out, and I told them to just take the water from the jug, so they could use cups. But they didn’t want it. I asked them why, and they said, ‘If you drink out of the well of a Valmiki [a sewage worker], then we will take water from your jug.’ I couldn’t believe it, these three women who were too good to drink from my cups but still wanted my water, talking to me like they were so much better than me! Oh, it made me so angry. So I told them, ‘If you don’t want to drink from my jug, then you can’t have water from my tap!’ They said, ‘Did you put the water in the ground? It’s not your water!’ But it was my tap, right by the building! I told them they had no right to talk to me like that, I’ve a BA, they can’t act like they’re such goddesses. They spent their whole lives in this little village, but because of their caste they’re too good for my water. They said, ‘If you have so much money, why are you living in this building, not even in your own house or apartment!’ They were Patels [a higher caste], these three. These Patels are always practicing untouchability. They’re the worst. I told them to leave and never come back, and never take water from the tap ever again.”

I was surprised that right by the campus of the organization, the village women still practiced untouchability. Annie told me about another experience she had in Sanand, the closest town. She’d gone with her husband to find a house to rent so they could have their own place and still live near the organization. They were having an interview with a landlord, and it was going fine until the landlord asked their caste. They said they were Dalits, and the landlord told them that, sorry, he only rents to Darbars [a dominant caste] and Patels. They tried a few other places, and it was the same. That is why they’re currently living in the building at the edge of campus.

In many ways, this vocational training center is a kind of oasis. Everyone treats each other equally, regardless of subcaste or gender. Annie’s stories served to remind me of the reality outside.