Careful What You Wish For

Let’s put our guesthouse in Tirur squarely under the heading of “Be Careful What You Wish For.” After not working at all in Bangalore for two weeks, we lobbied ATI to send us elsewhere. They promptly obliged, letting us know of an opportunity in Tirur in the southern state of Kerala. Having received our wishes on a golden platter, Jenna and I took an overnight train to Tirur and arrived early Monday morning. Tirur is a moderate sized town in the middle of the Kerala jungle--not too small but appreciably smaller than any Indian city we have been in yet. It is not comparable to Steelville, MO, but may be considered close in size to St. Joseph or St. Cloud. In Tirur, we were promised a four-month job teaching English at a private Muslim high school. We were also promised a modest stipend and free room and board.

Jenna and I quickly found out what you get for free.

Our apartment sits on the second floor of a rundown building on an unpaved side street, amidst a crowd of chockablock structures and crumbling shanties. You can’t miss it for its lime green paint job. Since we took the overnight train from Bangalore, we arrived at the place a little after seven in the morning. A rooster crowed. Dogs barked. And a baby nearby began to wail.

You enter our new home through a padlocked steel gate that guards a small porch. Through another door you enter the living area—which is furnished with a few plastic patio chairs and a plastic table. Two naked light bulbs cast an overly bright glare off the scarred, chipped walls. Our bedroom is just that: a bed and a room. A set of three grimy shelves sit recessed in the stucco wall. There is a spare room, filled with dusty English grammar books and old newspaper and another bed. I guess this would be our guestroom. Our kitchen is furnished with a few dusty dishes, some pots and pans, and one gas stovetop. No oven. No refrigerator. The bathroom has both Western and Indian style toilets—in case Jenna or I feel the need to experiment—and a rusty showerhead that spurts out only cold water. A forlorn sink sits outside the bath in the living area. Two worn mats lie atop the salmon-colored tile to give the space a little life.

Our guide for the day Suresh—a staff member at ATI in Kerala—gives us the tour of the place and promises the school we will be teaching at is “walkable” from our apartment. We ask about an Internet café and he assures us one is “just next door.”

“You feel uncomfortable?” he says, wagging his head back and forth in the Indian way.

Neither Jenna nor I want to appear the pampered Americans that we clearly are, so we both shake our heads vigorously: “No, no, no! It’s fine. We’re just tired from the train.”

Suresh looks unconvinced. “Tea?” he asks, trying to make us feel at home.

“Sure,” I reply.

As Suresh goes to the kitchen to make the tea, Jenna and I gingerly lay down on our new bed. Its wooden frame creaks and pops ominously. I stretch out and find that my feet hang off the end.

It is hard not to feel depressed at this moment. The furnishing is Spartan, the look of the place dingy and neglected. I am reminded of a budget hostel we stayed at in Siliguri on the last day of our week-long “honeymoon” to the Himalayas. We only needed a cheap place to stay before we caught our plane back to Kolkata the next day. Yet, we spent our entire night watching TV and not moving from our beds. This place in Tirur does not have a TV, I think, casting the memory of Siliguri shamefully from my mind.

The realization comes to me that so far in India, we have been lucky in our accommodations. Wireless Internet both in Kolkata and Bangalore. Hot water. Refrigerators. Fully-stocked kitchens. I feel guilty for my moroseness.

After tea, Suresh says we will soon visit the school. He will leave temporarily to give us a chance to freshen up. After Suresh has gone, all Jenna and I can do for a while is sit on our rickety bed in silence. We want to unpack but we have nowhere to put our things and the limited shelves we do have our blackened with grime. So, we sit and do nothing.

As I try to motivate myself to do something in our new home, I glance out the window and see a teenage girl walking out of a nearby building. The structure she comes from is dilapidated—with mold stains, peeling paint and decaying roof tiles. She has a backpack and a crisp gray school uniform that matches her gray headscarf. She must be Muslim. Suresh said the school we will teach at is “walkable”. Maybe this girl who just walked out of the old building next to us will be a student of ours.

In our bleak surroundings, I am given a moment of insight: our students will come from places like this, houses and flats in worse shape than this. Maybe they have no running water. No fans. No furniture. Suddenly, I realize: for four months, at least we can survive.