Ladybug's field notes

I t's about a year that we started walking (read, leap-jumping) in the path of providing a crucial support to women who face domestic violence. Here is a story to describe the nature of the work. Read on.... Minati* went back to her own home with her 2 months old infant. Her mother informed us. We were anticipating it. We thus get a break from the follow ups at the family court, advising Minati's mother, counselling Minati, looking after her nutritional needs, emotional needs, regular psycho-social support. A break. Which may be long. May not be too. When we met Minati about 6 months ago, she was already in the second trimester of her pregnancy and was living with her parents.  Minati was a 19 year-old when she got married to a guy whom she started talking to via a cross call. The caller must had figured out that she was a young girl, and that was enough for the calls to continue. The man on the other side of the line finally reached her house. Minati'

In India, the current favourite line is that we need to stick to our roots and take lessons from our past. Our women are becoming too westernised. They want to choose their life-partners and all hell break loose. What can be more "western" than women trying to take the matters of their own sexuality in their own hands! Let's try to go back then. Although I surely realise these are dangerous times to write on these issues, but like Brecht said, what do we sing about if not the dark times, in the dark times. Well! He did not exactly say that. He asked us to keep singing. Here is my song bereft of the apparent music but who knows you may hear Bismillah playing Shehnai for I will talk of weddings (well! sort of) and the rules that guide it in these times.   But let me start from Mahabharata and that too at the very beginning. The Adiparwa when Pandu is talking to Kunti to convince her to get other men to beget children: He says, “In the olden days, we hear,” he begins, “

I spent close to two decades in the development sector and about a decade and a half of which was spent as a donor's worker. It feels like a good time to reflect on the learning :) One of the things that has really intrigued me is the "want" for swift results as a donor. I probably came into the sector at a time when the discourse was shifting from "issues of poverty and disenfranchisement take a long time to address" to "we need to see the change in our period in the organisation that we are working for" or in other words "we are impatient optimists". I also got the dominant thought of that time as follows: "What can make me Mohammad Yunus of health or education or livelihood?" Probably a lot of business leaders were asking this.  Dr. Yunus broke new grounds by showing the banks (a profit making business) that poorer segments of the society can be their customers too and he introduced the non-profit sector to the idea that &quo