Ladybug's field notes

I was thinking the other day about the lectures I get from time to time about how I should dress, what I should add to my get-up to give myself a more acceptable (according to patriarchal standards) and/or serious (read, older woman) look, how I should conduct myself, why I should not laugh out loud and the list just goes on! The list is so long that if I actually maintain it for a year, I may not find anything 'right' about me at all! And then there are always those doubts and disapproval about the "right". Was that the "right" place to be? the "right" time to be there? and the "right" reason? Too confusing? Allow me to explain. All my female readers might find it easier to understand.  Please think of the last time you were harassed on the road. No! I am not talking about those every day incidents that we have all learnt so well to ignore, the same way we ignore barking street dogs! It is not about those. I am talking of the in...

They say, "Going back to your own past is never easy!" I tasted the uneasiness this week, albeit a bit differently. Murshidabad district of West Bengal is a place that I associate with my childhood as my father belonged to that district. All our holidays were spent near the mighty Ganga. Mighty, cause when I saw the river the Farakka barrage was already built and that brought in huge quantity of water to Ganga ..to much dismay of the neighboring country! It was beautiful to live in the village home surrounded by coconut and mango trees, pond in the backyard and a river flowing at doorstep. I never learnt to fear water. I lived with and loved water. And our love-story continues.. I visited the same place (well! not my village) last week and being a rationale human being, I knew I could not expect to go back to the fun and frolic of my childhood. After all I was going to one of the poorest districts of the country. Murshidabad is famous for all the wr ong reasons.  It i...

My friend from a land rights movement support group was aghast! She could not believe her ears. A fellow country-man landed in Delhi to 'support' the march of the tribes for land rights and seemed visibly disturbed on not finding a welcome committee with garlands, cars to take him to the venue 180 km away. He was also worried about being cheated by Indians and warned my friend against the same too! "They are basically cheats, you see!" My friend lost her cool, "Why did you come to India to stand by Indians in the first place? and you say you are a supporter!" But, this was a Frenchman! I thought of my experience during the trips with the Indians (not bharat ke log...but Indians), mainly from donor agencies and at times national capital based NGOs, to various parts of the country. I found a similar echoing in the sentiment. They couldn't think who to blame other than the rural women for remaining unlettered and not sending their children to school! ...

I am a staunch believer of everything that is humane. I trust human emotions. I believe, it is because we get moved, we get going.  It gives me immense pleasure to see a smiling baby in her mother's lap in the corner of a street. I smile all the way back from work. A face battling pain/tears never fails to bring tears in my eyes. I battle to send the tears back and walk on and murmur, "It will soon be better for you". When a thousand hands go up to the sky and say, "We would struggle/no matter what!" it still gives me goosebumps. A wonder thinking I have been part of rallies as long as I remember!  A lone voice of protest never fails to inspire me. It is the human spirit that keeps me going...always..everywhere..all the time! On my way to office, on the bridge over Yamuna, I see a kid quite often. All dusty and full of mud.  "Can I give him a bath?" I think, almost instantly. He evokes a strange urge in me. I want to give him a good scrub. Then ...

"Untouchability is almost not there in the village now a days. It has really changed! They even let us use the grinding machine at the village to grind our grains too!" Nalita said. I was a bit surprised to hear this from a member of a Hadi* Community in a coastal district of Odisha! Can this be true? Can it be that all the Dalit rights organisations of this state are basically 'focusing only on celebrating victim-hood  and over-emphasizing the “they all oppress us and no one follows the law” psyche', as some colleague mentioned the other day? I decided to probe further. "You are saying that they let you grind your cereals whenever you go?" Binod was almost irritated at this silly question. He said, "No! How can they? We go on Monday before 12 pm. Then they get some time to wash the machine and dry it, so that the others can grind their grains." Who are they? What if it's not a Monday? What if it's beyond 12 PM? I don't have to conv...

"Rama jagi..Ram jaga/jagi nagri saari/Maya jagi, Kala jagi/Jaagi ghar ghar nari" (Rama woke up, so did Ram/ the whole town woke up too/ Maya woke up so did Kala/ each wman in each house woke up too) Or thats what I frequently claim about the work with women on rights of the poor. In Uttar Pradesh's 9 districts, I did not work on women's rights with poor Dalit women. I did not even work on Dalit rights. I strongly believed if you work with the most  vulnerable in a marginalized community and facilitate the process through which they take charge of changing their community's future, you would be able to protect the most vulnerable's rights in the most sustainable manner. I started developing rights based projects in an  environment ridden with skepticism. "Rights based work? Umm..isn't that all about destroying national property and wasting time (of the right holder as well as the duty bearers) and money by blocking roads, jamming offices, promo...

Have you ever felt that at times you just fail to convey what you really want to however much you try! You phrase and rephrase the sentence in your mind but when it finally comes out of your mouth and you hear the echo of it in your "target", the disaster has already struck! It has lost all that it was originally meant to be. Do you also remember those times when you have been unable to convey why do you feel in a particular way? And why some things are so important to you? And why are you all agitated and trying to explain while the rest of the world just passes by? It means nothing to so many. That should be enough! But it is not. Not for you.   At times they smirk at you for being so "emotional". They ask you to keep your "self" out of this. Don't get too involved. I have heard this phrase ever so often. Have you ever thought about how does one do that? How does one actually keep one's "self" on a shelf before entering the doo...

I n the Baramunda bus stand of Bhubaneswar, Odisha I was asked to stand by the bus waiting to go to Phulbani. "I have the ticket with a seat number..see" I was keen to prove I was not an imposter. "Yeah yeah...that's okay but just stand by" the conductor said. "But why?" My initial surprise was soon turning into irritation. I was early for my bus. I did not want to struggle to keep my bag in the overhead compartment. The bus was all ready to go. It was nicely washed and the conductor had also put some incense sticks. Why couldn't I get on to the bus? "Oh..this is the problem with urban women..they don't understand a thing." He told his fellow conductor and turned to give me a piece of his mind, "Madam, you can not get onto the bus unless a man boards the bus first. It is inauspicious. Cant you see the bus is all cleaned up and you know very well that women are unclean on some days. Don't you? Can we ask around who is goin...

In Social Work education, we were often taught to put theory into practice. As we entered the "field" however, most of the theories seem redundant. The "field" tests all you have learned. Not only through your books but also through your life. However, when I decided to go back to reading some of the recently published books on community work this year, I found a lot of what I was doing were making perfect theories! Several Deja vu moments for me in the past one week. "Jelkhana se chhutne ki khwahish nahi..jelkhana jalane ka wada karo" (We do not wish only to get freed from these prisons but promise to burn down the prison itself) Pudna and other women continued the rest of the song with much fervor but I remained stuck on those words. "Which prison are they talking about?" I thought, "Are they now calling their marital homes, prison?" I could not wait for the rest of the song to get over. "What is this prison?" At...

More than 500 women reached Lucknow either late evening or early in the morning. They were representing exactly 80,346 women from 36 Blocks and over 660 Gram Panchayats of Uttar Pradesh. After working for more than 4 years in their respective villages and blocks, they now had enough "rehearsal of the revolution" as Sanjoy Ganguly of Janasanskriti (www.janasanskriti.org) puts it! They now wanted the new state government to share their dreams. Their dreams of a new society where the basic rights of poor women are fulfilled.  In Kismati's words, " We are quite confident of being able to tackle the issues of non-implementation of MNREGA (100 days' work) and Public Distribution Systems (PDS) till teh district level. Four years of intense engagement has at least gave us that much confidence. But, we have also learnt that many things move from Lucknow and we are here to move those otherwise unmovable wheels". In Uttar Pradesh, the average number of days achie...

I  am often asked in the rural areas of Eastern Uttar Pradesh, "Didi, you are a married woman..why don't you wear a bichhia (toe-ring) in your feet?" As the question generally comes after they figure out that I have a child, I laugh and ask, "Now now! just because I have a child, I don't have to be married too..do I?" Some nervous giggles follow. The women start playing safe now. "What does our brother-in-law do?" ask one of them and then come back to the real question, which is, why don't I wear a "mangalsutra", a "bindi", some "sindoor" or "bicchia". Anything....almost anything will do so far it successfully announces my marital status.  When these conversations take place in the lazy evenings after a hard  day of facilitation, I joke some more but engage in  a long conversation with the women surrounding me. I ask them who or what decides whether they may or may not wear all these things that the...

I looked at Indira with disbelief! I was shocked but she actually managed to take a deep breath, wait for a few seconds to pass and talk in the same calm voice that she had, to begin with. I looked at the men again. I could not believe I was hearing this, “Women? Well! they are good for nothing now-a-days. They are only good at sleeping beneath fans. And what is this excessive laad (love) for one’s own body? They want to bathe with soap every time!” The men were indignant.   This was in Ajmer district of Rajasthan. We were talking to a group of men in the evening near the village temple. Women could not join the meeting. Completely our fault! We organized it at a time when for the womenfolk it was time to cook and feed the whole family. Children were dozing already after a hard day of playing in the mud. The women would also get ready for the work in the fields at night alongside their men or make some extra arrangements of food and tea for workers in the field, which they wo...

"We are poor when elections are here. When it is time to count the BPL (Below Poverty Line) families, we are not poor at all"! added Anarsi with a sarcastic smile. her simple analysis stumped me! She was explaining how the Gram Sabha (open meeting of the village council) meetings take place. Women in the meeting explained how they protested there against the Gram Pradhan and Secretary smoking country cigarettes ( birhi ) and passing time. They actually asked them to stop fooling around and conduct the open meeting of local self governance seriously. Ramratti was quick to add, "The Secretary then told us, had we been so vocal and upbeat about the Gram Sabha processes, there would not have been so many wrong BPL cards! It was I, who said then..", she emphasized, ".. mere bhai (my brother), I was not there for sure but were you also not there? Was it not your work to ensure the deserving ones get the cards?" (Gram Sabha) These are leaders of Pra...

We spent the night under open sky in Kusumkhet. They gave me a string cot. There were many more cots around. We were still waiting for the rain in May end that year. You will remember the bus stand was 3.5 km away. Villagers had informed us that night, the only bus for the town leaves at 8 am.  Shivaji bhau,  my colleague and I hence woke up by 6 am and were ready to go after our morning cup of black tea. Most tribals in India do not take milk from animals and hence a cup of tea with milk is almost non-existent. We started by 7 am, well in time for our bus. The path was full of ups and downs both literally and figuratively. On our way, we discussed tribals and their relations to the forest. Forest department and their role figured into our discussion and the nice discussion soon turned into hot debate with facts and figures and global trends. It was Shivaji bhau's turn to present his set of arguments as we reached the top of a small hillock and that caused an end ...

"If the grass is to mean anything, a time comes when you have to get up, brush the ladybugs (he actually said "ladybirds") from your shirt and trousers and proceed to your desk to write"....so says Ruskin Bond. And here I was...trying to sell the same species showing how essential she is to make sense of what is there on the grass! Now, making sense of things comes to you quite naturally at times and not so naturally other times. And it never ever comes to you however hard you might try in certain cases. Gosh! While trying to make sense, I am sounding a bit nonsensical myself!  Lets take an example. I was walking with Parama Sabar in hilly terrain of Gunupur, South Odisha (that is, he was walking and I was huffing and puffing!). He talked as we climbed a long and winding road to reach his village for a meeting at night. We were talking about the (in)famous " Ambatakua"  (seed of a mango) statement by a state minister of Odisha. When people died of...