That night, the men were crying too!

The faint yellow glow that came from the three light bulbs above our heads illuminated the faces around us. Muffled whispers and sniffles are heard. Anitatai’s voice was clear inspite of the unshed tears in her eyes.

“We are grateful,” she said “to you three girls who arrived from the city as strangers into our village and created firm places in our hearts never to be replaced or forgotten. Now you are ready to depart and return to the lives you had left behind to be with us, simple folk of a ‘khedgaon’.You gave us six weeks of your life and touched our lives forever.” “More importantly,” she added in a choked voice. Now the tears were streaming down her face. “We thank your parents for placing implicit trust in you and permitting you to come and live miles away. Being mothers ourselves we recognise the anxiety, fear and worry that must have plagued their hearts while letting their daughters go amidst virtual strangers.” She broke down unable to continue. The scene is still vivid in my mind .

Six weeks before though I knew that our village internship would be a memory that would last us a lifetime, the intense pain of emotion I felt at the time of our departure was almost physical.

Pratibha didi our reporting officer often used to joke, “Be sure to let tears plop when you leave Ambegaon.” Then in a serious tone he would add, “ For their innocent minds, tears represent the medium through which a plethora of feelings are expressed; be it grief, despair or sheer joy.” Being the composed person that I prided myself to be, I used to imagine their disappointed faces when my stubborn tears would refuse to to drop when the time for me to reciprocate with tears would come.

The day of our departure was a glum one. There were rain clouds covering the sky which added to our gloom…because the first showers of the year that had been expected before our departure hadn’t yet occurred. Every little thing, the new little shoot of the cotton crop that I saw on my last walk in the fields, the clothes flapping on the terrace, the wind that coursed through my hair, the little calf who was tied to the edge of the shed, the fruits of the neem tree, with whom I used to scare away the squeaking birds with in the wee hours of the morning, even the little dog who always snapped on my heels evoked in me the same shattering thought , ‘ I probably wont ever get to see this again’ That, rather the prospect of leaving saddened my heart. `Maybe this was the end…finally the end.

The huge crowd that had accumilated on the porch of ‘our’ house, itself was a BIG surprise. Did we really know so many people? Vaguely I could fathom familiar faces- women whose hands had heaped homemade food on our plates, children with whom we had had fights for our turn with the cricket bat, men we used to meet in the village grocery store, who gave us a side glance but never ventured to talk. The time had come for us to leave. We were pushed into the car that was to take us to the city, for fear that the flooding emotions will prevent us from leaving. As I rolled down the glass of my window, tears blurring my sight, amidst the bawling women, the men stood there,silently. That night, the men were crying too!