Friday 16th December
I am up earlier this morning. The sounds of the household are becoming familiar to me: the scrubbing noises as floors are cleaned, the swish of the grass brush, the clank of pots and metal buckets, of water pouring and the various tones of the different voices that inhabit the place. I’ve had a somewhat restless night disturbed by mosquitos and the subsequent itching that the bites give rise to. I meet Prakash soon after I rise. He turns the water on upstairs and we make an attempt to use the toilet, to check that it is working, to discover that water is leaking from the connection between the pipe from the cistern and the toilet pan itself. There are a number of minor ‘snaggings’ as we would call them in the UK, various bits and pieces not quite right or useable yet.
By 10.00 a.m. I have been visited by Shiv lal and with the help of Prakash and his brother managed to get all of the rest of our things, including the fridge and the contents of the kitchen up into the new space. I also manage to have my first bath in the new washroom. Prakash and I then venture out for supplies, dry foods, cleaning materials and light bulbs. My intention on returning is to begin to clean the kitchen equipment and then to get this essential room operational. However I am thwarted by the fact of the water being off as the plumber attends to the various leaks in the new system. At 2.00 Shiv will pick me up to take me over to Suvidya’s house. Shiv tells me that he hasn’t visited Suvidya since the last period that Sahishnu was here. I find myself disappointed that the group doesn’t stay in contact between the times that the project is in operation. This isn’t new and also might account for Shiv’s anxious queries – a similar energy that I detected in Saraswati’s voice on the phone yesterday – about when Sahishnu will be coming. He relaxes a little when I explain that we hope she will be here in the next month.
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