Ma! Let Me Be Born...

The trip to Jhansi nearly didn’t happen. Relying on  the self proclaimed largest  radio taxi network in the country Meru cab, was not such a great idea I realized, as I stood waiting  for the taxi to show itself,  vacillating between the extremes of anger and nervousness and feeling the biting cold seep through all my insulations. It was 5:30 in the morning, and despite frequent  calls to the cab’s control room, I didn’t see the cab anywhere in sight, until it arrived, tearing through the surreal fog like a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock movie, with barely 20 minutes to departure time. But make it I did, thanks to the energy levels of  two coolies who appropriated my  rather small pieces of luggage between them as soon as my cab drove into the station ramp. They  ran, like twin heroes in a Hindi film, undeterred by  baggage checking  machines or the crowds on the platform or even the inexorable tick tock of the clock closing in on departure time. I had gone ahead and was already in my compartment, my thudding heart and shallow breath signaling my own efforts at getting in,  when the duo  deposited the  two pieces at my feet, bare seconds before the Shatabdi chugged out from the station.

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In Jhansi our organisation was  to hold a medical camp at its school: Kusum Rani Bindu Saksharta Kendra. We had opened the school in an area inhabited mostly by bidi workers, where literacy rates amongst  women is less than  20 percent.  The idea was to   broaden the possibilities of adult women, whose life  had snagged on the brittle path of domestic work and long hours hunched over   rolling tobacco leaves into unfiltered cigarettes, all for a pittance. Their  youth and youthful dreams slowly abraded by the harshness of a present, which offered little beyond the relentless demands of the everyday. Education, we thought would usher in an oxygenated breeze into  their  cloistered world, besides enlarging their idea of the many doors that education held the key to  - and even if they rejected its promises for themselves, at least their commitment to their daughters future would be stronger.

 With most government run Saksharta (Literacy) Kendra in this backward area of Bundelkhand in    U.P. closed or barely breathing , we had established  this school buttressed   on the strength of pure good intent and no funding . But keeping adult women engaged on the abstraction of a ‘ better future’ while the ‘now’, sculpted their uncertain home economics, was a good intent slithering on slippery ground.  The women were looking at ways to earn a livelihood, certainly something that would bring better dividends than the present occupation. To attend a school needed tremendous motivation and encouragement, which the socialisation processes had not instilled in them.   As the drop out rate accelerated after six months,  we were left scratching our heads wondering what to do next. To close the school would have been an easy way out, but that would have been a contradiction of  the spirit of BINDU ( Building Initiatives & Networking for the Development of the Underprivileged)   

Three factors influenced our  next decision: providence, intent and need. The first emerged when  a gutsy  and smart college girl, fired by the desire to do ‘something’ for the needy,  came quite of the blue, and declared that she was interested in taking up the challenge of keeping the school going.  Next, was our organisation WWHI’s commitment to the cause of education, and  lastly came the wish of this  community of bidi workers   to have their girls acquire an education. The three made a potent combine to make us change tack and keep the school going.  We decided   to open this informal school to girls as well, both as a tool for education and as a means for personal enhancement.

On the day of the Medical camp, which focused more on generating awareness about heath, gender, reproductive health as well as  tackling myths and taboos about menstruation, we had a large audience of some forty people, with one third being adult women.   The program began on an ominous note  as the mobile in my coordinator’s hand  buzzed  and the speaker at the other end  informed  that the Doctor   was caught in an emergency caesarean, and so she would not come. ‘Now what?’  The coordinator’s panicky  expression said, even as  the audience murmured its anticipation. And as if on cue the banner proclaiming the program fluttered more vigorously in the sudden wind.

‘I will do it,’ I volunteered, having some experience in conducting awareness camps, aware too of the need to save the situation.

The subjects raised during   the camp, provoked long and thought out discussions, the passing minutes recording the deepening confidence  of the women, who had begun diffidently  in these areas where patriarchy enforces women’s presences to act as mere  backdrops. The girls were bright and responsive, though when the talk turned towards unwanted sexual advances or the reasons behind menstruation, they were mildly uncomfortable, unused as they were to such open  discussions on these subjects. When asked what they wanted to do with their lives, each one had imagined a promising future for herself. Many wanted to become doctors and Miss

(teachers) some dancers and designers ( the new fad!) and one a singer.  This  was followed by impromptu performances by the girls, who now took centre stage, launching into free wheeling performances with a lack of self consciousness, which would have done professionals proud. Film songs continue to be a great source of inspiration for the girls, cutting across the cities or the strata the girls hail from. Sheila ki jawni, a provocative item number from films, made a girl gyrate and swing a la Katrina, its heroine. The women were suitably inspired by their daughters, and shedding the inhibitions that years of conformation and  living with their in-laws  had instilled in them, they too sang and danced in this open forum, visibly reveling in this sweetly  liberated feeling.  And then the girls broke into a chorus of poetry. The one which made my throat a little weighted,  was a poignantly rendered appeal to the mother to let her daughter take that first gulp of life – this in the light of the growing sex inequality in the country as more and more female foetuses are aborted.   The girls recited,  “  Ma let me be born/ I shall  love you, I promise / make you proud as a son would / How am I less? We can become Lakshmibai or Theresa/……I too am of your lineage/  let us be born. “

‘To be born and to be given the opportunities of life,’  was all that they asked, all that their sisters, many who have been given no such voice, also echo.