So far trying to combat inequality in India feels a bit like
the death throes of an arcade game – blindly manoeuvring every which way at
high speed in a frantic attempt to stave off game over. Poverty and tradition
are the bad guys working together like some kind of inequality supervillain
that lurks round every corner, and it feels like there’s only so far even the
most aggressive optimism and determined will can get you (i.e. not
very far.)
Due to some transport issues (if you’ve ever been to India
there’s a little in-joke for ya) I ended up helping out at a slum school on my
first day instead of the women’s college I’m supposed to be working at. Turns
out there’s nothing quite like walking through a slum to make you feel totally helpless. I was coaching a select group of all male children for entry exams at a local private school (chosen from a class containing only three girls out of around twenty five children in total) but in the slum gender inequality didn't exactly feel like the most pressing issue at hand. I wouldn’t blame anyone who has a pile of rubble for a bed for not giving a
fuck about anything else other than how to swerve cholera, never mind the ideas
of another silly white alien invading their home. Needless to say, shoulder-deep
in economic desolation I didn’t really feel I could launch into questions about the archaic views re: women and education typically held by less privileged groups in India who are removed from progression in every way.
Challenging these
views and getting more girls into school is obviously really important but if
you want some motivational insights into how we can all work together to fight
the problem whilst Beyoncé songs play jubilantly in the background I’m afraid I got nuthin (and if I can’t find
a way to utilise Beyoncé rest assured it’s a lost cause.) Or at least I’ve got nothing so far. Poverty may be an
overarching problem that seems to swallow gender inequality in its FUCKING
MASSIVE jaws but I’ve got five weeks left and I’m not ready to completely
abandon hope and leave it at that just yet.
Working at the college is far more reassuring. The women
were really shy and barely said a single word on my first day, but after a few
days of hanging around the college they started relaxing into my presence, and
the more I get to know them the more I’m absolutely convinced that being here
is totally worth my while. When I’m standing in front of a class they pretty
much radiate ambition; there’s a tangible sense of purpose in the classrooms
and it’d be impossible for anyone not to get really excited about being part of
it, never mind someone who genuinely loses her mind over a tree-ripened mango.*
When I’m sitting across from one or two women practising speaking skills I’ve
never seen such concentrated and urgent determination on anyone’s face than one
of them being absolutely set on understanding what they’ve just heard.
I’ve only worked
there for four days but I’ve already heard so many obscenely positive things.
One girl took me to one side to earnestly tell me about the importance of
education and what it means to her, another one chased me down to ask ‘please
could you give me some tips on being self-sufficient?’and
I’ve heard girls making jokes about their biggest ambition being to become
housewives and then watched them kill themselves laughing together at the thought.
Basically it couldn’t be more obvious that not only do the women at the college have an
acute and detailed understanding of the problems facing their gender in their
country, but that they’re also dead set on overcoming them. Furthermore they
seem to be able to appropriate a genuine love for their country and value for so
many of its traditions into their attitude that puts their attempts into a
really interesting context.
One the one hand it’s pretty uplifting to learn that certain
oppressive elements of a culture aren’t capable of marring an entire heritage
or national identity for the women within it, but it does make ‘empowerment’ a
lot more complicated. When a young woman who’s fiercely devoted to learning
English and becoming a bank manager tells me that she’s excited to get married
to someone of her parents choice because of a cultural tie I could never relate
to I don’t really feel like I’m in a position to challenge her. When I hear a
woman who is driven, motivated and clearly very intelligent say things like ‘I
love my parents and I know they’d choose well because they want the best for
me’ and ‘it worked for my parents and my grandparents and I want to be part of
that tradition’ it feels like the whole issue is far more complex than I could
have imagined before I came here. I can’t bring myself to romanticise a tradition that played such a huge role in the deaths of 8,233 women in India last year alone but it’s going to take a bit of time to decide how much I can
blame the tradition itself rather than the individuals who abuse it. Tradition
1 – 0 Millar.
Despite the problems I’ve described in all the above, I feel
like I’ve only really encountered one thing that I was truly completely
unprepared for, and that’s the attachments I’m already forming after
only one week. For some reason I was under the impression that I could work in
a women’s college for six weeks and then draw a line under it as a defined
project and comfortably move on having made a finite contribution to an ongoing
issue. I think that might be the most short-sighted conclusion I’ve ever made,
and I once tried to repair a leaking milk carton with a plaster. (I misleadingly
use the phrase ‘I once’ like it didn’t happen at some point in the last year.)
I’m not looking forward to having to leave the women or the project but it’s
pretty early to be worrying about that so for now I’m just going to make the
most of it whilst I’m here.
Which has been pretty easy to do so far, India is amazing.
Until next time. x
*in my defence their skins are yellow and their flesh tastes like how happiness feels when you're five.
*in my defence their skins are yellow and their flesh tastes like how happiness feels when you're five.
