Once we got there Anjali got the story. The woman had taken a nasty fall and her ankle was badly sprained. The doctor had wrapped it up but given no medicine or further instructions. She was unable to walk on her own. She was so demobilized that she couldn't even go to the bathroom. And there was no one besides her mother, the little old woman, to attend to her. But the mother had a high fever herself, so was too weak to help. As a result the woman had stopped eating since her injury; that way she would not need to go to the bathroom. And since she wasn't eating, the mother stopped cooking, figuring there was no point to cook for just herself. None of her neighbors had offered assistance.
Clearly they were at a distressed low point. We walked out with Anji reassuring them that we would do something to help. She already had a plan. As we walked back to the car she said we would build the woman a toilet that she could use while her ankle recovered. We would get a plastic chair, cut a hole in the seat, and put a bucket underneath. We would also give her some sand which she could cover her waste to avoid odor. We would set it up inside their house; the mother would simply have to clean the bucket everyday. Once she had a way to go, she was free to start eating. Once she started eating, mother would start eating, and both would hopefully recover more quickly.
One of the things I admire most about Anji is that she is highly sensitive. In the sense that she has incredible powers of observation and awareness, and also in the sense that she has very deep empathy and willingness to connect with people in any circumstance. In this case most people would have stopped at helping this woman home and maybe listening to her sad story. Most people tend to keep chance encounters shallow. It's too messy to go deeper into people's lives, especially strangers. If you had to stop and get involved with every person you run into, you'd never get your work done! But that is Anji's work. She has an incredible fearless openness and curiosity to following threads, wherever they may lead. She recently shared how she was on her way somewhere, spotted a man eating some morsels on the side of the way, stopped to talk to him, and ended up canceling her other appointment to share a meal because "there was something interesting" about the man. Another time she told me she decided to walk home from Ganeshnagar through the Tekra and it took her three hours (normally 30 min) because family after family stopped to talk or invite her in for chai. In these and many situations she puts no self-imposed limit on how deep or how far she will go in connecting; she keeps it open-ended for fate to decide.
In this case fate had us building a toilet. After it became clear that there was nothing more to it than a bucket underneath a chair, I marveled at the elegance. This is what Ishwar Kaka must have fallen in love with! He would have been delighted and proud of this project. I was thrilled that something so simple could have a big impact on the woman. By cutting a hole in a chair and placing a bucket under, it would set off a chain of events that would help this woman live much more comfortably. It was reminiscent but seemed a lot less thorny than the time we tried to build a bridge for Ganeshnagar.
One thing I suffer from is tunnel vision. When I am doing a task, blinders go up so I can focus on the task and filter out the distractions. Linear thinker. It's good in a way, but one downside is I often miss elegant shortcuts or helpful leaps that I wasn't expecting. Anji has no such problem. She is a master at being aware of her surroundings and finding hidden resources everywhere. Spatial thinker. When we were walking down to the car with the chair and bucket, we were getting into the car and in front of us were some painters up on ladders doing some work on our building. Behind them was a pile of sand. Naturally it was spare, so we could help ourselves. Meanwhile she noticed the painters were carelessly splattering paint on the plants next to the wall. She asked them to be mindful because the plants are lives too.
We got back to Ganeshnagar and the Patangyu kids sprang into action to cut and deliver the toilet. We traced out a hole, which was done with much deliberation and with input from the females on the team. Rahul took the plastic chair into his house and heated up a small kitchen knife on the gas stove. When it got red hot he quickly pressed it into the chair on the traced line. He got the four edges started with the hot knife then finished it off with a saw. He was drenched in sweat working in a tight stuffy area with a hot knife and burning plastic fumes wafting around him. The cut came out perfect. It was magnificent work.
As a finishing touch the kids named the chair Santosh ("satisfaction" as in satisfaction of relief), drew a smiley and wrote the date to commemorate Patangyu company's first toilet prototype. We brought it to the woman who accepted it and agreed to use it and also to eat. We placed the chair and bucket in a carefully chosen place in her one-room home to conveniently sit, access water to clean herself, easily get to the sand, and not be in the way of other stuff. Anji checked on their food supplies, they seemed ok. She handed the woman some packets of Advil to help with the pain, but reminded her that she could only take them with food.
As we walked back with the kids one of them spotted a rainbow. It was faint, but it was definitely there. I thought it was a fitting way to mark the conclusion of the adventure.
To me this story is remarkable in many ways. If you asked Anjali, she probably wouldn't agree. That's what makes it so remarkable. This is her life, this is how she lives. Actually, this is who she is. I just happened to be there that day, but these sorts of episodes are a routine part of her life. This story captures Anjali in a nutshell. This is her essence.
I think for outsiders looking in it is an inspiration to see how living a life that is open to and even strives toward depth of interaction at every turn becomes a rich life, a life worth living.
