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We All Miss You

Thursday, June 25th, 2009


After four weeks of a new relationship we had to say our goodbyes. It was great having you here. Virag you taught us a lot about organisational changes happening throughout the world and it was a pleasure to have you here. For those who don’t now, Virag , a Hungarian, was an animal rights activist working in an international NGO in London. She came here with her boyfriend Joszef and they travelled a lot of India before coming here. We were introduced sometime in September 2007 and she was looking for an NGO to volunteer for a few weeks.

She chose us. She knows her reasons best but whatever they are, i’m thankful for them. Had she not come, i would not have understood my own need to change the structures at our organisation because it did not seem right. Also she re-affirmed my pride in India and the thing everyone accused me of having :eternal optimism. Joszef helped us put up a concrete plan for fund raising because who ever has ever worked with NGOs knows what a problem that can become. With his degree in psychology from London, he also helped out counsellors wing to brush their skills.

But besides the professional know how, it was their interest in India that had me stumped as well as their inherent pride in their own country: Hungary. They have read all the books i could think of about India, its culture, its history, its society, travelled from Chennei to Kashmir, from Pushkar to Orissa. I’m ashamed to admit but i haven’t been to places where they have be . They share every work as equals. Their love for each other, the care and dreams of a future together make you want to fall in love . Joszef’s sense of humour, Virag’s shyness and permanent smile is etched in our hearts.

We all miss you. Thank You Virag and Jo. This is from all of us here. We had a great month and hope you did too.

And yes, everyone is still digesting that you have finally gone. The food misses you too.

Have a great life.

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Thank You Baba…

Thursday, June 25th, 2009


Baba said, “Those who do monumental work don’t need monuments.”
And he lived and died like a monument himself. Indeed no monument can ever match what he did. His actions , his thoughts and his vision surpassed all a person could dream of. Thank You Baba..For being what you were..Thank you for showing the way where others saw none..Thank you for leading when there were no leaders to follow..Thank you for being an example when all idols were shattered and there was no one to look up to. Thank you for standing for your convictions and giving one the courage to go after the things s/he believed in.
You’ll be remembered always..and live in the hearts of people you touched in your special way..
“He came to be known as Baba not because he is a saint or any such thing, but because his parents addressed him by that name,” - Sadhanatai Amte (Baba’s wife)
BABA’s words that still make me proud of ourselves….
“I haven’t the arrogance to say I can carry the mighty load of His Cross, but I do try to walk in its shadow. He wants to carve your life like a crucifix. Every calamity is a crucifixion, crucifying your ambition, your lust. Each is a tiny lesson, and then the imprint of the crucifixion is on your life. What is your plan of sacrifice today? You and I, petty souls, sacrifice for our children. Christ sacrificed for tomorrow’s whole world. Whenever I see slum-dwellers, with their hunger and poverty, that obscene poverty, I feel He is crucified like that. When I come across a person suffering from leprosy, foul smelling, ulcerous, I can see the imprint of His lips, His kiss. What did they not do to sufferers of leprosy in His time, yet the carpenter’s son cared for them and touched them. That hand is an emblem for me, that hand which cared for the loneliest and the lost. The Christian is … he who not only lights the darkest corner in the world but also the darkest corner in his own heart.

“Charity Destroys; Work Builds.” “I believe as a society we have to evolve, through experimentation, a system which combines the principles of individual freedom and common ownership. And this is what we have tried, basically with success, in all our projects, involving leprosy patients, tribal people and the so-called ‘disabled’ persons.”"Consider the honey-bee. Its treasure is nectar, obtained even from the chilly plant. It is not at the cost of the flower. In fact, its act of extracting honey contributes to the progress of the flowers. You need not learn from Kahlil Gibran, Marx or Gorbachev, not even from Gandhi-ji. Choose instead to learn your lesson from the honey bees as your silent partners: they will show you how to develop without destroying.
“I have never been frightened of anything. Because I fought British tommies to save the honor of an Indian lady, Gandhiji called me ‘abhay sadhak’, a fearless seeker of truth. When the sweepers of Warora challenged me to clean gutters, I did so. But that same person who fought goondas and British bandits quivered in fright when he saw the living corpse of TuIshiram, no fingers, no clothes, with maggots all over. That is why I took up leprosy work. Not to help anyone, but to overcome that fear in my life. That it worked out good for others was a by-product. But the fact is I did it to overcome fear.
“Joy is more infectious than leprosy.”
“Our governance is by a gerontocracy. This cataract of history can only be removed by youth. In this common man’s century, only the common man can change the profile of this country.” ..”The war-cry will no more be with Marx and Mao: the spirit of revenge cannot build a new world … Only a revolution which leads to a higher sense of human dignity can lead to a higher and nobler way of life. Revolutions based on hatred and violence does not really change the situation. They merely transform the people who had been exploited into a new class of exploiters but hatred and exploitation remain. Therefore, there is no substitute for Gandhi’s way of rousing the impoverished masses to creative awareness.”
“To me, the common man’s society is a mask-less society. He does not carry that thick mask which the professional people, the upper classes, whereas they might look nice and beautiful. Very often they do not dare to say what they really think and feel.”
On Spirituality”I’m so busy, I have no time to pray! The Lord is kind!” “Wherever God has pointed the way with his finger, he also cleared the way with His mighty palm.”
And there was so much much more..

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Celebrating Gandhi

Thursday, June 25th, 2009
I sometimes teach.
That’s when my whim takes me or when i have time from my busy schedule. There’s no dearth of students or at least those who pretend to be. They come here to learn different things, mostly vocational courses with as varied courses as driving to electronics to computers to fabric painting and there are about 45 types of courses that we offer…We are a developmental organisation for new comers and this is one part of our work and there are many others which i’ll let you know by the by..
Ok. So, on some days i just talk to the students about different things. We share our thoughts and experiences and it is more about me than them. I often do it when i want a third opinion after my own and my own..They, in a way, represent , mini-India, with myriad cultural identities as only our country can give.
Back to my point. Today I had one of those whims. Tomorrow we celebrate 138th year of the Mahatma’s birth and United Nation calls it “International Day of Peace and Non-Violence”.I thought let’s talk to the students about the “father of the nation” and see what they have to say about him. It was raining so most of them were stranded. With little options they came to the conference hall. And well, as soon as i told them what we would be talking about, i saw the most pitiful faces. The usually interested students who loved those talks gave me dark looks and faces that were almost falling off with incredulity which said, “she’s absolutely gone nuts” .
I knew this was going to be a long one. One of the girls said she absolutely hated him and when i asked her why, she didn’t have one answer. There was another guy who went berserk saying MKG had married many women and the number of children he had would put Bin Laden to shame. Noone knew the exact year of his birth, and according to them he was born in some place in Gujarat, or was it Rajasthan? When i asked them why we called him the father of the nation, someone was intelligent enough to tell me that it was because Shri Rabindranath Thakur had conferred upon him the title of “Baapu” and went on to add that this bit of information was courtesy the movie “Lage Raho Munna Bhai” which he had recently watched.
Dearest Baapu, if you do turn in your grave, i guess it will be surely just because you’re laughing too hard. I know you had a great sense of humour. Who can forget those lines? Or do they know about it in the first place? On being asked why he was wearing such a modest attire before his meeting with the British King, he quipped , “The king’s wearing enough for both of us”. Or the time when he was asked what he thought of western civilisation, he said , ” I think it is a good idea”. Also when he was in SA, came back one day from his meetings and told Kasturba” You , from today are my kept woman” because the government here needs proof that you are my wife..And the list is endless..
So what has gone wrong?? Why have we forgotten Gandhi? Don’t we read about him in every other class? Is it only a holiday? Is it only a day to give a wash to all his statues all over India and garland him and then forget him after the “bhashans’ are done with? And some of the students also hated him because it was a “Dry Day”. Ok.. I think we should all have seen it coming..
They don’t know he is still is a God of the blacks in Africa. They don’t know that he almost single handedly, without the bombs and explosives , led the biggest democratic country in Asia to “Democracy’. They don’t know what is Gandhianism. They don’t know what he meant when he said “show the other cheek”. They don’t know what was the significance of the “Dandi March”. They didn’t know what the “charkha” meant to him. They don’t know he had followers in Henry Ford, Martin Luther King, Roosevelt, Nelson Mandela and scores of others. They don’t know, when two of his most favourite people had let him down in the worst way and were celebrating independence in their respective new born countries, the Mahatma was sitting on a hunger strike in Kolkata, seeing his India breaking up into pieces. They didn’t know he was killed by a fundamentalist when he was praying to God for non-violence and solidarity. Oh , wasn’t that a non-violent thing to do?
I think, today of all days, we should know our dignity lies in our sovereignty and our culture. When the world is looking at us , we are forgetting our own culture. The “Indianness” of the “charkha” is waiting to be re-recognised. His lessons of Non-violence and truth carry so much of importance today with bombs going off at every other city, the every other day and India leading the list of countries in corruption.The hippest and most happening places in the metros are called MG Road and MG arcade. And I have some serious doubts if the hippest and the happening even know what MG stands for.And let me not start about the morons called politicians. If wearing white kurta and “Gandhi Topi” would have made them as great as “Gandhi” i need not have written this.As for the fundamentalist of all religions and faiths, hope they forget it for one day at least and we do have a “Dry Day” where not a drop of blood is shed in the name of faith and religion.
Thank You Baapu. Can’t say for the others, but in my heart, you are truly, deeply loved.

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The Children Of The Street !!!

Thursday, June 25th, 2009
A few days back i made a stop near the local market because i had a pick a few things up. As i was waiting for the driver three little children showed up. You would have seen the type sometime in your life if you live anywhere in India. They have dirtied torn clothes and faces which are difficult to tell apart and those simply magnetic and pitiful innocent eyes. They won’t speak a word and the only thing they know is to outstretch their hands, begging for alms. They won’t leave you alone until you either give them money of dirty looks or both.

Now, we work with child labourers and street children. We run three schools with 50 children each in the district at three places, Joda, Keonjhar and Banspal. We also have 20 Non-formal education centres in 20 slums where non-school going and drop-outs are taught in play-learn methods and gradually enrolled into regular schools with periodic monitoring to stem the drop-out. We also worked with 700 such children and their parents in the past where we gave importance on the capacity building of the parents, sensitization, micro-enterprise development and decreasing the work hours of the children alongwith compulsory education.

That was just a background and besides the point. That’s what makes me think about those children a bit closer from a different perspective or maybe vice-versa.

I asked them what they would do with the money (there were two girls aged anything between 6-8 and a boy who was maybe about 10-11). First they kept quiet looking at me with those idiotically sweet eyes and nudging at me. Then after i gave them one of my best smiles and sat with them they finally relented. They said they hadn’t had anything to eat since the morning and they would get something to eat. Now, i usually don’t give alms to able-bodied beggars and specially when they are children. But try as i could, i just couldn’t ignore this. I asked a shopkeeper nearby to get three packets of some good biscuit or crackers. He told me, “Vini, let them be, they are all little devils”. Little devils or not, i had to talk o them and there wasn’t any other way. I asked them about their lives. They belonged to a nomadic tribe. At the risk of going off topic again, most nomadic tribes in India are not in any schedule, they are generally treated as “born criminals”, they do not have most of the civil rights, they are denied the basic right to vote because they do not have a “permanent address”, they cannot even open an account in any bank and lets forget the passport and other things that we all take so much for granted. As is obvious their children are not sent to any schools. You would argue, who would take them. I, partially agree. Yes, no one but that’s because we still haven’t thought about them or accepted that they are Indians too. They live like foreigners in their own land. They make those lovely idols with plaster and china clay which are worshipped in every Indian home, be it a Hindu, Christian, Buddhist or those tablets in a muslim household.. They give ‘jadi booties’ for a zillion ailments and before shitting those let’s have a research on those traditional herbs and medicines.

Ok..back to the children. i gave them the biscuits and told them to eat it in front of me. They did so, very reluctantly. I promised myself to visit their families after i came back from a week of meetings at Bhubaneswar and would spend at least an hour with their children everyday. That was more selfish on my part. I wanted to know how the children adjusted to the nomadic lifestyles. I wanted to know how the kids felt being unwanted at every place they went. I wanted to know what was the normal life for these children. I wanted to know what the children thought of the only profession they had been taught since childhood -begging.

I reached here the night before the last. Yesterday was Diwali so stayed at home. I came early today so that i could spend some time with those children and their families.

Their tents are gone as are they.

My dreams of talking to them will get fulfilled someday. And meanwhile, thousands of such children are getting robbed of a childhood without the basic rights to health, education and shelter.

There are so many “only ifs” but none to drive away those innocent eyes that haunt you long after they gone…

Footnote: UN defines every child of 6-14 age group out of school as child labour.

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I Want To Go To School Too Father

Thursday, June 25th, 2009
i want to go to school too father
you, a girl? why,
you dream too high
what need of school for you?

am i not a child father?
is school not for me?
don’t i need my lessons in life

what lessons girl?
isn’t the home school enough?
isn’t your mother the best teacher?
doesn’t the forest you pick firewood from
teach you the lessons you need?
they don’t teach cooking
or washing utensils and clothes
or tending the cattle
or working in the fields

and who will look after the younger children
when your mother is working and i’m not home
who will cook and feed?
who do you think will get the fodder
and pick the mahua when season has come

school isn’t for you girl
go, see your brother cries.

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India Rising???

Thursday, June 25th, 2009
I owe this to my friends..all those who have hummed and hawed because i’ve been out of touch with almost everyone.It’s just one of my phases when i needed to get in touch with a very important person in my life-myself.But more on that some other time in some other age..Those who know me won’t ask..and those who don’t , don’t need it anyways…

We have a school for Juanga girls with 150 children studying in it. Juanga is a PTG or a primitive tribal group, one of the 75 odd identified by the Government in India. They are generally defined by a declining population, low literacy rates, traditional ways of living, dependence of minor forest produces as a source of livelihood, non dependence on agriculture as a source of income..You can clearly imagine them..Yes..they live in the remotest of areas..in midst of jungles..have traditions that are lovely..
You know how they get married traditionally??Well..they’ll put your disc parties to shame..Every year they have three major festivals..called “parab“..Once in winters, then in spring and then rains..which mostly coincides with sowing, ploughing and reaping of whatever “padu chasa” and “shifting cultivation” they do..These festivals run into weeks where groups of young people, men and women go to visit different clans..they have a specific number of clans and each clan has a mukhia or a leader. Each clan lives in it’s own village and every village is again rule by a specific set of rules..There is a “manda ghara” or a central house(you can call it a club house if you will) and a fire burns in each of those manda ghara since they have resided there, come summer, winter or rain.It is the place where everyone sits down for a chat or important discussions or a simple game of ‘bagha cheli“( Lion and Goat). Every house is a big one room where all the non-breastfeeding boys live..If you thought tribals usually have joint families..think again..They have very small nuclear families..in fact, as soon as the children stop feeding from their mothers, which would be till they are about four, the boys live in the “manda ghara” and the girls live with old women who have been widowed or living alone..Polyandry and polygamous marriages are not uncommon. Yes..going back to marriages..The groups visit each others’ clan and some kind of initial wooing and matchmaking takes place in those nightlong dance and song sessions..The boys then tell their parent who that girl is who they want to get married to..And then the father of the boy gives the village of that girl a grand visit with the mukhia‘ of his clan…
He reaches the “manda ghara” and talks to the village leaders..then the father of the girl is called for..They have a talk about the feasibility of the marriage and the consent of the girl is asked for..if she says yes they do a “horoscope match” which is a bit out of the way..They place three grains of rice in a triangle and cover it with a mud pot..the next day if it is as it is, they are sure the marriage is good for the couple..( i have this nagging feeling the girl would change it with the help of someone if she didn’t like the guy..}..
Anyways..after that, a dowry is worked out..which is reverse..the guys family pays to the entire village of the girl..the dates are fixed..and in the meanwhile the boy and girl together build their home..after the home is built they get married..The boy’s family and the girl’s total village give them whatever is required to start a family including pots, pans, money, rice, everything…

That’s the beautiful part..Now with bans on marketing of forest produces, limited and curtailed rights on forests, timber a total no-no(which i totally support), they have now reduced avenues for income. Even agriculture requires skills which they do not have..Having lived a life of fun , frolic and less hard work, they now find it difficult to adjust to the ways of the world..There are times in the years , all they have for food is Rice and salt..and for some weeks, not even that..They buy rice and divide it in two parts.They boil one half and drink the water or the carbohydrate rich “mand“. The next day, they keep it out to dry and boil the other half..this goes on till the rice water is no more milky and thick and that’s the day they eat the rice..

May sound like a story to you..i myself wouldn’t have believed it if i hadn’t seen it myself..
The reason this post was written in the first place is that we run a school for 150 girl children of that community. The female litercay is less than 2 %. I went to live with them. There are no concrete or black top roads to the village, there is no water supply, no electricity and yes, no bathrooms or toilets..You hve to get water from a tube well which is 500 meters off..(thankfully, Rotary International has decided to build a tube well in our school and toilet’s will be constructed soon after the water problem is solved).
This place gave me back my perspective yet again.Sometimes, when work becomes monotonous and nothing makes sense, and it becomes easy to lose hope. These people, with there woes and yet such happy smiles and small happinesses make everything worthwhile… and make you appreciate what youhave. But, that’s another part of my story.
The sensex crossed 20K and maybe it’ll break a few more records in the coming days..When it’s so easy to get lost in India rising and India shining , it helps to do a reality check.
Footnote: Right to food is one of the basic human rights of a man.

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Know AIDS For No AIDS

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Ok..that might seem a done to death line to you..but it still holds true..

World AIDS DAY-December 1

This post is for all people out there in the world who are living with HIV/AIDS.

This one time , i’ll let the numbers do the speaking…;

Number of people living with HIV in 2007
Total 33.2 million [30.6–36.1 million]
Adults 30.8 million [28.2–33.6 million]
Women 15.4 million [13.9–16.6 million]
Children under 15 years 2.5 million [2.2–2.6 million]

People newly infected with HIV in 2007
Total 2.5 million [1.8–4.1 million]
Adults 2.1 million [1.4–3.6 million]
Children under 15 years 420 000 [350 000–540 000]

AIDS deaths in 2007
Total 2.1 million [1.9–2.4 million]
Adults 1.7 million [1.6–2.1 million]
Children under 15 years 330 000 [310 000–380 000]

And guess what? None of them invited the disease..

And there was only one cure : Awareness.

There are still a lot of myths and misconceptions attached to HIV/AIDS. And we can make a difference in only one way..Spread the awareness in as many people as we can..

What is worse is that now besides the disease the people living with AIDS have to face a worse scenario-That of the stigma and being ostracised by the society.

Let us help them live a healthy life and one filled with love and care.

Just for the record, try imagining a world without those 34 million people who are in every sphere of the society. They still have a lot to contribute to our world, socially, emotionally, economically and just as human beings.. Let’s help them do it.

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Mora Silate Nahin

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

The first time i met Putli was about two years back.

Seven years old then and already a bread winner of the family..She had one of those faces which hold you mesmerised for heaven knows what reason.. like the pull of an unseen magnet..like a moment already familiar before it actually happens..

I was on my field tour. After the regular monitoring and feedback sessions from the field functionaries were done and after i had visited a few households of that interior village in the hearts of the jungles and hills of Keonjhar i still had some time with me..

Like anyone in that place you too would have been captivated by the rawness of the beauty of those hills, the chilly winters, the villages with a facade of a thatch on each of it’s house, every household barely hiding a tale behind the broken wall meticulously hidden behind a torn saree and every face, a hypnotizing story…
Putli was the eldest of the five siblings..two boys and three girls..Barely seven and her day started much before the day did..She would wake up before the break of dawn and clean her home and clean the dirty utensils from the day before..and some days there is also vomit to clean..the outcome of too much or too bad country liquor consumed by both her parents..
Her parents work in the local mines and whatever earning they have gets over much before they reach home..
Putli’s work then is to go into the woods and gather firewood for her home and finish her daily ablutions, if it can be called that, a leisurely munch at a twig, a rushed answer to the call of nature and a quick dip at the dirty ice cold pond…after she comes back she cooks their first and sometimes the last meal of her day. In between she also manages to fetch water from an open well which is about two kilometers away from her house..The tube well is lying broken since five days after it was put up , which was more than two years ago..She then cleans her siblings and by then her parents are also ready to go off to the quarry..She then dishes out portions for everyone..Most of the days it is only rice and salt and some days they have a feast of a few tomatoes and potatoes boiled or toasted in the fire..
Her daily schedule after her parents are off to work is pretty much the same.. She picks Mahua flowers (Mahula or Mahua is a flower which is used as a main constituent for fermentation of alcohol), dries them and meticulously carries them home..On one of my following visits, those children were carrying five containers..Putli ,the eldest, was carrying a broken bucket of lubricant picked from somewhere, the one younger was carrying a cut out engine oil container, and it kept growing smaller till the youngest one was carrying a broken plastic mug..They were all picking up Mahua flowers..Just for record, the youngest one wasn’t walking yet..Putli put him down under a Mahua tree and he picked all flowers he could lay hands on and filled his mug with glee..his prize for the day and his contribution for his share of rice..

If it isn’t Mahua season, they pick Sal leaves..Or sometimes it is “Jhuna” or frankincense..And all these products are sold in the local weekly haat which fetches their weekly ration of rice and salt..The products they collect from the jungle changes according to season but the routine doesn’t..except for the rainy season..During rains they mostly keep indoors and the elder ones work as labourers in the local rice fields…
These children have probably not worn a dress newly bought since ages, the ones they have are hand-me-downs, tattered and torn. During the winters an empty sack of potatoes bought for four rupees from the local shopkeeper doubles up as a blanket and a shawl depending on the time of the day..
These children don’t go to school though there is one at a stone’s throw..
Our Government makes numerous policies and laws on providing compulsory primary education for every child, basic health and sanitation facility to every human being and no labour by children that somehow remains in the books of those who make the laws, never read or understood by the people it is meant for..
This isn’t only her story..There are millions like her..On one hand i know she’ll never probably be able to read this but i have a hope that maybe someday her children will..or maybe her grand children..

Incedentally, ‘Putli’ is oriya can mean two things - a doll or a statue…
The first time i met her, i asked her..”Why don’t you go to school..
She answered..”mora silate naahin..” { I don’t have a slate }

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The Stepping Stones

Thursday, June 25th, 2009
I’m tired.And blissfully so.

The last time i climbed those hills was when i was still young and a few kilos less.And that was when i was still running and exercising and would never tire.Now it’s a totally different story.

Anyways that isn’t what this is about.

It was a trip planned for Virag and Joseph.It’s a pleasure showing them around. When there’s a pair of new eyes that see your country, your villages and your small world, it’s like looking at all of it for the first time for you too.

After a week long ‘Perspective Building Workshop” we went over to our school.After we hand painted a five hundred and a few more cards with those tiny palms and were all coloured in bright colours - pink,red, yellow, orange, blue and green, off we went strutting to the Juang village near the school and spent some lovely quiet hours just sitting at the porch of those lovely huts of the even lovelier Juang people..getting drenched it moonlight and finding our way back through the narrow lanes of the village with just that light above..It was lovely..the bright moon..the village and the people..The funniest part was when i asked the driver to switch off the lights and drive on our way back to Keonjhar after that nocturnal walk. I could sense he was totally apprehensive but what choice did the poor guy have? Once i realised he wasn’t going more than a snail’s pace with the lights switched off ,more so because he was scared than the real danger in it, i asked him to switch it back on..Ok there was no road that could be called one and was more a few small and big rocks piled on to give the impression..but haven’t we been there zillion times already? i thought we could drive through those jungles blindfolded and there was this huge moon , almost full, shining down as if the sun had given it the power-of-attorney for a day..

If that was,’t tiring enough, i invited V and J to go on a trek..Sunday, a few friends, a hill beckoning and a trip that was begging to be taken since the stars appeared in the sky..

So there we were..all geared up, the water bottles and a heavy breakfast..Oh yes..really heavy..it being a Sunday and with J-2 and M also coming over, mom made those lovely idlis only she can make with that mean side dish of coconut and groundnut chutney , sambhar and pudina chutney to accompany.. All those who know me know that i’m a foodie but when it comes to south-indian food prepared at home-you won’t find a worse sucker for it that yours truly.By the way J-2, weighing 35 kilos when you’re already in your twenties and a waist size of twenty isn’t really a thing to boast about..Please add a few kilos to that skeleton you carry everywhere before you vanish into thin air..The complex you give me is not to be mentioned either..And M, J and V asked me if R was your daughter..So you know what to do..

Oh..back to my track..er..trek..the ground rule when you go for a trek is never start with a full stomach..and mine was not only heavy but would have fallen off if i wasn’t blessed with a flat one, not-genetically. As we started and had only walked about two kilometers i was panting like a dog..And we had still not reached the foot of the hills yet..

And guess what? Today being a Sunday and the week of picnics around this part of the world there were about a thousand people who had decided to chose our destination as their’s too..The only difference was they came loaded in buses and jeeps and cars..and we were on foot..taking the road not taken..atleast not by the civilised folk….And we were stared at like we had just escaped from a zoo..Ok we made at unlikely team..two whites and one a shade of brown…But they could at least hide their incredulity till we passed them. I swear i had fight back the urge to go and put their tongues back safely to where they belonged and clip their lips more than a dozen of times..

We started on the trek through the winding footpath made since ages of travel by the people who live up in those hills. And we met quite a few of them..It was a rush today because of the weekly “haat” or market, which is where all the economics , sociology and history happened for all those people..And what took the cake was they had cattle accompanying them in those roads broad enough only to let one person pass at a time and filled with huge rocks and stones smoothed down with years of walking on them..it was quite slippery and a slip would mean a fall of quite a feet and at least a dozen broken bones and scratches..No..you wouldn’t really die because the foliage is too thick and would break your fall..

The tribal people were far more decent than the “civilised” ones..There smiles were more genuine and curiosity more to know about the people rather than act “oh-i-see-foreigners-all-the-time-and-they-are-so-common” and ogle at them like it was just the opposite.

After walking for almost an hour through those meandering roads and gaining altitude with every step, we came upon the lake all of a sudden..It was breathtaking..in more ways than one..we were taking in air by gallons…and the view was magical..But that’s about it..in the scene which ideally should have been accompanied by a soft rippling of water and the sound of the waterfall had about four different music systems bellowing at just below the 20 k decibels mark..and all those songs which made no sense at all..On second thoughts they did..but you’d have to have a knack for lewd double-meaning lyrics to understand them as well as a love for loud hammering that’s a combination of hard metal and war drums..

When we reached the fall Joseph went into it like a fish which had been kept captive on land against his wishes..There he was..swimming and getting freezed in the water that made our feet numb..that’s about the part of our bodies we managed to wet..

In the meanwhile we had visits from hundreds of the picnic-errs…staring at us as if that wasn’t what they were really doing..Some overgrown teenagers beyond their teens did start to act smart, like most of them usually do..behaving worse than animals in jungles..making remarks that violate the basic rights of any human..that of dignity and respect..what with the social networking sites they virtually live in..they think everything goes…for them, it isn’t real people and real feelings..i don’t blame them either..It’s what we get from too much exposure to all things western and yet not understanding where the rights of your freedom end and where you start encroaching the space of someone else..Seems stupid but they need to understand that watching almost naked women gyrating in music videos is one thing but expecting every woman to dress like that in real life is a different matter altogether..and all the while i was thinking about Virag who took pains to dress according to Indian sensibilities and her whole reason of coming to India was to find the inner beauty that we Indians supposedly are endowed with loads of..

As we came back there a bunch of students who came running for photographs..Virag and Joseph said they faced it all the while in India at tourist places where people wanted to take pictures with them..Joseph said he was really cool with hanging just above the fireplace as a prize certificate in the drawing rooms of the thousands of households..He also said he should actually start asking for money in return of pictures like every baba and shopkeeper did when he wanted one and save on a few rupees..

So..there..We came back through those hills..meeting those tribals again..some drunk beyond their senses and totally oblivious to the world and doing and saying things which had me in splits..and some did make sense..their anger against the civilised world which had the best of everything and yet never spared a thought about the elephants that ate their crops, the poverty they live in..oh let’s forget that for a while..We also manage effectively to leave behind the plastic cups and bags and loads of garbage after we have had our picnic..for them to clean..It’s their waterfall..their lake..but when have we ever spared a thought??

We were finally back..totally tired from the day of walking and climbing those hills..and those stones i stepped today were all worth the effort..because i learnt some things our books forget to teach…

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The Roles We Play

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Sakhshi (not her real name) is 11 years old.

Her father died before she knew what a father meant. Her mother committed suicide when Shakshi was just about 9. The reason: she couldn’t take in the accusations by everyone around of being a bad omen and incessantly accused of being the reason her husband died. People wouldn’t even look at her because that would bring bad luck for the day . And what’s more- she had two daughters and had failed to produce a son.
Orphaned along with her two years older sister, and with no one to look after her, Shakshi was sent to their maternal uncle’s house. Both of them worked like domestic helps doing all the cleaning, washing and cooking and of course no love, acceptance, education or payment for all they did.

On a day she fell sick she was taken to a doctor who took pity on the sisters and hired them to work in their houses, one for his family and the other for his in-law’s place. Does it need mention that their monthly salary of Rs 200 went to their uncles? I think not.

After a few days of work Shakshi was sexually abused every day by the doctor for 6 months and when she couldn’t take it anymore she told about it to the doctor’s wife. The doctor’s wife beat her up and accused her of lying and threw her out of her house.All the neighbours were also told about what she had done and they finally branded her as being mentally unstable. The kid all of 11 years , walked for miles, with tears running down her cheeks with no-one to turn to and reached the place where her sister was working. She told her what had happened and when her elder sister tried confronting the family, she too was asked to leave the place immediately.

The two sisters were found by a person passing by, under a tree , huddled together and crying . And that is how they came to us, scared, hungry and probably permanently scarred for their lives.

Does this make you angry?

This is not the only story. We have 78 such stories filed neatly in files in our SWADHAR Home, a Shelter Home for women in distress which provides shelter to such women and takes care of the emotional and psychological needs, the medical needs and also initiates legal steps to bring justice to the women wronged. In the meanwhile besides the counselling they are also provided with vocational trainings so that when they go back to the society they have something to fall back on. Throughout last week we were doing the an assessment of all our programmes individually and the organisation as a whole and we tried to analyse our objective as a leading NGO in Orissa. One day was for SWADHAR and we tried assessing its role and our objectives. Was it to provide shelter to women only and the medico-legal and psychological counselling?

Is that the solution that we are seeking? Is that the issue at all?

We started with a rich picture which charted the journey of a woman and believe me it doesn’t end at a shelter home. A shelter home can be a temporary arrangement and she can never make this her home. And if she did, i’m not sorry to say that surely will not be healthy, either for the woman or the society. It can only facilitate the process to get justice and try to ease her pain and give her the confidence to face the world and overcome the emotional and sometimes physical battering she has received.

That girl would not have had to face all that she did if she had found some sympathy at any step of her journey- at her own village, at her uncle’s place, at the doctor’s house , with his wife or at any of the “Mahila and Shishu desks” in every district or any other place which could have stopped what happened to this tiny girl. And better still, her mother would have not committed suicide driven to despair by the callousness of the society.

We see violence against women in so many areas, with so many faces and be it Guwahati or Konark or Mumbai, the cause is much beyond not providing safety to women. When last week we sat down with our counsellors and managers for the annual evaluation and objective analysis the picture was far from what first met the eye.

When we drew a problem tree where on the surface we had a woman on the streets without the family support and tried to reach the roots, which really wasn’t easy because one would say it was lack of awareness, education, poverty , physical weakness and the rest but gradually it went down to a society where we still have a deep rooted patriarchy, where women still have to carry a stigma if there is any deviance in their perceived and society designated roles. Call it hypocrisy, call it multiple standards but it is there for you to see.

Men do not wear Indian dhotis and kurtas anymore, at least not on a daily basis but a woman has to confirm to the Salwars and Sarees and if she wears jeans pretend that she likes Salwars and Sarees more. A woman who leaves her husband or the other way is ridiculed and shamed at every suitable occasion. A woman who drives a car/bike depending on which place you live in is sure to attract some incredulous looks.A woman has to adjust and sacrifice if she has a violent husband who beats her up and never talk about it to anyone and turn up smiling and understanding the next morning. God help a woman whose husband dies before she does. You would say that sati is only some stray occurrence in backward areas, but if you look closer you will find her burning in a social pyre every day . Brides are still being burnt for dowry as if she was a burden and had to be paid off.

We have 6 million girl children missing from our population and the female ratio is declining, more so in the high literacy and high growth states with Punjab, Haryana, Gujurat and Maharashtra leading the list. From 976 females per 1000 males in 1961 it has come down to 927 in 2007 and is decreasing at an alarming speed. If you think that wasn’t shock enough, think of this: There are presently 24 Districts in India which have a female ratio less than 800 and they are all in so-called developed states. Wasn’t education supposed to empower women? So what happened?What is it that going wrong? Does social stigma and patriarchy ring any bells?

If you still don’t get the implications think about these : Think about the 6 million guys who won’t have a partner. What will they do? Do you think they will turn yogis? Definitely not. They will borrow from the future generation, old men will get married to kids, one woman will have many husbands, the kidnappings and women trafficking will increase and no, women will not have better respect. We just might usher in the purdah system and women might again end up in the confines of homes without education or a share in development process.

When we drew the objective tree, the vision we have set for ourselves was quite clear: We wanted “A society where a woman lives with respect and dignity , has equal opportunities in every sphere, has the freedom and independence to take decisions about herself, is an equal partner in development and democracy”. Sounds like a lot doesn’t it? But is it too much to ask for? In a country whose basic constitution is based on equality?

As we started finding out structures it became evident that the support systems like police stations, courts, punishment of the guilty, early justice, swift action were relevant but more important were building the base with education, health and economic development of the women and at the same time working on removing the traditional stigma that exists where women are judged based on primitive and traditional roles played by them.

I do not think we can change it in a day. Like any disease it is all right to provide medicines once you fall sick and having the right medicines but what is important is to not fall sick at all. But once we start thinking about the problems and realise that the solutions go much further than providing the curative care and is more about preventing such occurrences and promoting better practices by society i think we can go a long way. We have to start preparing the society for the change that will evidently happen and the roles will surely change.

[Photographs are of the candle lighting done by hundreds of women during celebration of "End Violence against Women" on December 10th'2007 as a part of 16 days activism to stop VAW.More than a thousand candles were lighted by women who came from different walks of life. ]

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