No Washing Room
“We are Muslim, you aren’t trying to convert us to Christianity are you?” D asked, worriedly.
On clarifying, D relaxed and began to tell us about his life. He had three sons and three daughters, and lived with his wife and two of his sons. One of his sons was married and his family lived with them as well. Another one of his sons, who teaches at a madarsa lives in the same compound with his family and occasionally shares kitchens with D’s household. There was a gas cylinder right by the kitchen door, but the family mostly used a homemade stove fueled by cow dung cakes. They also had a fully functioning toilet at the back which was built using funding from the government.
D’s family had lived in the village for as long as they can remember. They grew and harvested rice, had been breeding fish as well for the past four or five years and make a reasonable profit. They sold the fish to middlemen who came to the village to buy meat and fish. A few kites hovered around the fishpond at the back, but D did not appear worried about them; “they’re birds,” he said, “they do what they do.”