Let me introduce Saraswati to you all. Saraswati, a seventeen year old
'bahu' of the Sarpaanch's (head of the village) elder brother, in the village
of Khatripur. Now, a little bit of geographical and demographic background is
needed to understand the context of the story I’m going to narrate to you, a
story of Saraswati, the woman, of all women in that village.
Khatripur is an interior village, situated about 55 km away from the
main city of Ahmedabad, Gujarat. As per the census-2011 report, total 205
families reside within this village, which has a total population of 1152,
while 583 are females, which is greater in number as compared to males.
During my fellowship journey, while supporting the rural government
primary education system by capacitating the school principals and consulting
in the overall development of school and community, a wonderful opportunity
came in my way to stay back in that village for a whole long month with the
villagers to put my feet in their shoes to unlearn and learn. In the initial
phase of my community immersion I stayed at the Sarpaanch’s place where I
discovered Saraswati!
Saraswati was married off and forced to quit studies when she was
fifteen years old. She shifted to her ‘sasural’ immediately after the marriage
and from then on stayed back at home performing the regular household duties.
Rising up very early in the morning (while the men of the families would remain
on bed sleeping), making ‘rotla-sabji’ as breakfast, washing clothes, cleaning
the house Saraswati never seemed to sit for a bit. Here, it’s important to
mention that Khatripur is a village of the ‘Thakor’s’, as they refer to it
‘Thakor’na gaam’. The Thakor community conventionally carries forward the
fundamental patriarchal values from generation to generation as a part of their
core cultural value system, where a female member is never allowed to come out
of their veils in front of strangers or senior members of the community;
Saraswati was no exception indeed; her identity was suppressed under her veil,
in the broad day light no one never asked her to remove the veil to look into
her eyes, no one, never, bothered to know who she really is. while I had the
fortune to meet the Saraswati behind the veil, once; and that meet made me
reflect, reflect on my existence.
It was a usual day when I was sitting around with her, post dinner, in
the bedroom for a short span of time til’ her husband would turn up. Suddenly,
she wanted to show me something and asked me to keep it a secret. It was a
drawing work book. She stated that she painted sometimes to support her nephew
in school tasks, as the boy cannot paint. She was hesitant, embarrassed yet
excited to show me her works. As I kept flipping the pages, as I passed by
every stroke of brushes, every explosion of colours created by her, I realized
Saraswati is brilliantly skilled, she is extraordinary. It burdened me up with
some sort of a strange guilt for her to be non recognized, and ‘our’ journey
began from there.
With the help of 8 upper primary female students I started to broaden my
network within the village. Wandering from door to door I eventually discovered
14 young female artists in that village, who happened to do ‘Bharat-Kaam’ or
‘Moti-Kaam’ (a region specific craft work) as a leisure. After conducting a
full-fledged structured research (using survey, interview as a tool to collect
both qualitative and quantitative data and complete the primary research as
well as conducting a secondary research by gathering documents from the
‘Paanchhayat Bhavan’, ‘Aanganwadi’, school and other institutions available.),
I’ve figured out that the males of the community export the items to the local
‘bazar’ in most cases and the females have no claim on the profit they
generate. The females are used there, as cheap machineries to generate some
extra income to the family, while they have denied their fundamental rights to
take it up as their occupation. With the denial of financial rights, their
identities were denied. Their identity, as an artist, as a responsible citizen
of the country.
In a span of next two weeks, I, with an extensive
support of two female ‘Bharat-Kaam’ workers and one of my peers, a young
talented theatre artist Shailesh Chhatrapal, and the local Government school
Principal Baldevbhai T Zala, an intensively enthusiastic personality, gathered
some funds (around 1,500/-). Seeking support from three of the small scale
businessmen from the nearest market place. Gathered sufficient amount of pieces
of clothes, motis, papers, brushes, colours and other requirements, which we
distributed among 37+ female artists. By the time they prepared their crafts,
several sessions (one-on-one and group) were conducted with them to understand
art and the market around to develop their knowledge, skill and self
confidence.
By organizing a cultural rally, where female upper
primary students (age group-12-14) came up with innovatively designed posters
with some social messages written on them, after spreading awareness in the
village, finally, a big event took place.
I’ve managed to seek collaboration from the
caretaker of the local Mandir, to utilize the space as the venue of the event.
The women who entered the Mandir space til’ date to pray for their husband’s
health and success, were for the first time, entering with their artistic
creations which had their names written on them. The artefacts were displayed
there in the broad day light, while a creative writing competition was held for
the young children, organized and facilitated by the female youth of the
community. 40+ women stepping out of their house visited the exhibition. The
Sarpaanch, the Cluster Resource Officer along with the principal visited. At
the end of the event, the children were given out the artefacts as prizes.
Bhaarti Ben, who originally is the Saarpanch of the village democratically elected
with majority votes and acts as the ‘wife’ of the acting Saarpanch, was close
to tears while greeting the team. The efforts of one month opened some channel
for the women artists, which was the beginning , the very beginning of their
journey ahead.
It’s been one and a half years, and two of the
young ‘Bharat-Kaam’ artists now have started with embroidery work in order to
sell their products locally (where they don’t have to depend on the male
members to travel to the market) realizing the scope of being financially
independent within their small sphere, where Kiran, one of them stated “Didi, I
earn now to help my mother and save up a little from it to attend tuitions,
where I can learn this craft effectively”.
There is still a long way to go to bring actual
impact of this one month project and the path is dusky, as dusky as Saraswati’s
face on that evening when I packed my bags and was ready to leave the village
and move back to my safer, a little (actually quite) privileged shelter, when
she silently moved close to me with teary eyes and handed me over her painting,
with her name, her identity on it, uttering ‘Sonali, keep this with you'. I kept her, within. :)
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