Morning Work

The sun creeps into the sky as I get out of bed around 5 a.m. (damn jetlag prevents me from sleeping in). I pull open my curtains and peer out the window at a home in the line of small houses feet away. The lights are already on inside. I cannot see the girl who owns the slightly off-pitch voice. Her songs mix with the morning air and find their way to my room. In a few minutes, a woman in a pink sari, flowers tied to her hair comes out to clean linens in the small backyard.

I have uncomfortably large amount of energy so I play the Girl Talk album and dance around my room for a bit. I try to play it low but wonder if the girl singing in the other house hears it - and whether she closes her ears to the odd recording or listens with interest. I wonder if there are any passersby who hear both our songs together.

Even though it’s early and I’m alone, I decide to go for a walk through the village. The cook for the institute is awake and greets me as I go.

“Good morning. Where are you going?” he asks

“Morning. Just for a walk,” I reply with a smile. He smiles back and continues to the kitchen, taking off his shoes before entering.

The streets aren’t as crowded as later in the day, but there is already a steady bustle. Some of the homes reverberate music into the town. Many of the shops are already open and the others are being set up by shop keepers. Men walk with cattle and goats. Stray wonder dogs walk alone or in packs in the road.

I think about how this is everyday life - not just the actions of it, but the meaning of it. The woman next door wakes up at dawn, when the temperature is coolest and the world is calmest. She begins her daily chores. I wonder what makes the town tick; I wonder where the meaning in their lives is. I am fairly certain it is powerful and extremely fulfilling, although I cannot understand what it is.

Religion? Family? Love? whatever it is, it is definitely not money, power, glamour or celebrity, or material goods. They don’t want or need what we think we want and need. What do they do for fun?

As I walk, a young woman leaves her house. She stands in the small field of wild grasses and stretches. Then large sun rises slowly in the background and I think, this is everyday life. This is my everyday life, this is her everyday life. I wish I could jump into her head for a little while.

I buy a bottle of water then head back (I don’t walk too long because feel slightly awkward walking in the town, like I am being judged for my skin, for my clothes, for my lifestyle. Do they blame me for something?) I pass three men taking advantage of the crispness of the morning, playing a game of badminton. They are having a good time and I suddenly miss toys – Frisbees, hackie sacks, skateboards. I feel like asking them to join, but I know that would be wrong. I feel really detached from this place – very much an outsider and an observer. And do women even play sports here?

At the institute I find a place in the courtyard under a palm tree to review some Hindi I learned during the semester I took it at school. It’s cool out and calm and I think this must be the best time of the day here – the daily rebirth. A few people work in the yard, which is thickly grown with plants.

But I’m quickly distracted by rustling high above in a palm tree, followed by loud smacks from falling coconuts. I look and there’s a man up there swinging a machete at the trees. The man is wearing shorts, no shirt and a wrap around his hair. He has the most perfectly formed body I think I have ever seen – thick arms, small waste, virtually fatless, lots of muscles, which is an obvious result of the kind of work he does.

He climbs silently, effortlessly and extremely quickly, gripping the tree trunk with his hands, shooting both feet up under his thighs like a tree frog, then extending his body straight and doing it again. We swings the machete, letting lose a large cluster green or brown coconuts. After chopping off one tree’s seeds, he proceeds to the next. He does this for dozens of trees in the yard, never showing any sign of fatigue.

As he climbs trees closer and closer to were I sit, the coconuts plummet and bounce closer and closer to me. He has no regard for my presence, which he shouldn’t. He’s the one who has a job to do. When they bounce up to my feet I fear being pummeled by them and move my seat to under the porch of the institute. Still, the falling orbs reach me. I move to the second floor balcony.

I switch my attention back and forth from my studies to the man’s acrobatic show. For a minute I feel compelled to give his task a shot myself. Then I realize the dangers and the skill needed, which I certainly do not have. Again I feel a great divide. Here I am, with my books and my leisure and there he is, hard at probably the most physical kind of work I’ve ever witnessed. I do not have to participate in this kind of work, or much physical daily work at all. The book I hold feels like a luxury. Lots of things feel like luxuries. But then, I do not make judgments on myself or the coconut harvester, or anyone else. We are different, but not opposites. I feel strongly there is no right or wrong way to live, no real cultural hierarchy – and their shouldn’t be a perceive hierarchy either. I wonder, if we communicated, how much we would have in common and how much we would learn.

Soon I’m joined by more students. We watch the worker with great interests. Misty, a student who brought her seven-year-old daughter along, tells me about all the physical health hazards (aside from the obvious one) involved in his work. Jeremy’s son collects a few and lines them up.

“Mine! They’re all mine!” he yells playfully.

A man comes with a large basket to collect them too.

Another student convinces the chef to show her how to open them up, drain them and eat the flesh.

People are close together.
People are far apart.
People are close and far.

There is now music coming from multiple directions. It is the music of the work of morning, calm and appreciative. All the sounds are not in tune. Not all of them are well-trained. But the air holds all of them, and sets them upon all the ears. It swirls them together so that the beat of one song sounds smoothly behind the melody of another, and there is no self-consciousness to the morning song, only a hum for the entire community to share for these earliest hours.