Christine Durocher's Chronicles from India (March 2011)

The Success of Vizianagaram

Here I am back in Vizianagaram, India, where I came to follow-up on the ex child laborers we have been supporting since 2003. Our project is in transition because we temporarily closed down the Rainbow Center last year, in order to integrate the children into the regular education system, now that they have caught up on their studies. Our children have also gotten older and many are now in high school or college, so it was no longer possible for us to educate them internally.

For our college students, it is the end of the school year. For the younger students, the school year ends in mid-April. I arrived just in time on Wednesday to accomplish the end of year formalities in the children’s college and to bring them back to their families for the summer holidays.

In the large college where Dhana and Devi study, a cheerful atmosphere reined with the anticipation of the end of year and summer vacation. Fathers were waiting in line to sign the necessary papers to bring their children home, while their daughters buzzed around in happy little clusters. Girls were racing down the stairs with their bags and suitcases, each carrying their plastic bucket for bathing, as customary in India. Friends were saying their goodbyes amidst laughter and tear stained tissues. One young girl I spoke with, whose father works in a bank, told me how she loves studying and how she wanted to become a bank manager. This is an India in full transformation, where young girls can dream of holding a more important position than their father.

Dhana and Dhevi dropped their suitcases with shrieks of joy when they noticed me. Before I could utter a word of warning, Dhana grabbed my plaster cast arm and shook it happily. How beautifully they have grown up. While their intelligent eyes still sparkle and their smiles are still radiant, we can sense that they have become young women. Dhana has lost some of her clownish ways and Dhevi’s features have become more refined.

How old are they? It is hard to say. In an India of villages, no birth certificates exist, and while parents have rough estimates, we have had to invent an official age in order to fill out the necessary paperwork to register them for school.

After a chaotic start to the year, when they wanted to abandon their studies, faced with a hard acclimation to a college where studies are done exclusively in English, and where students study from 5:00am to 10:30pm, they now radiate self-confidence and happiness in their studies. Both hold averages of 94-95%. Both have been selected for an intensive program, for the coming year, which will ensure scholarships and their acceptance to the best universities.

They no longer have any hesitation about their future plans. They, who felt such pressure two years ago to get married and drop out of school, now know they want to continue their studies and find work. When we spoke of their families and their expectations, they told me that their families no longer had any objections. They had also managed to convince them of the importance in pursuing their studies. Their parents later confirmed this.

Their self-confidence, strength, and determination are the best proof of the success of our project. They have taken over the work, which we began, of educating their communities, and, through their passion and calm confidence, are transforming them from within.

Ma pellalou

Ma pellalou, my children from the other end of the world. The girls have bows in their hair, and sparkling eyes. The boys are loving and gentle and hold hands when they walk. Maybe adolescence is a Western invention…

Ma pellalou, my children in Telugu... The girls enfold me in hugs and laughter. With the few English words they know and my basic knowledge of Telugu, we chat. Chinna, chinna Telugu, a little bit of Telugu… They tell me about the games they play in their villages over the holidays, about collecting water at the well to help their mother (the younger ones know how to carry one jug of water on their heads, the older ones two), about the studies they do over the holidays by reading their school books, and about their parents’ health problems. Priyanka cries as she talks about her handicapped sister. In an outburst of emotion, Annapurna, who had the courage to share a secret with me that was troubling her, tells me I am their mother: ma amma. I show them pictures of my daughters. Our sisters, they say. Ma akka. And little Jaylaxmi, with the large kohl darkened liquid eyes and the shy, yet mischievous smile, says naively and with surprise: “I am young and only in the fifth grade, yet I have two older sisters in University”… Two older sisters at the other end of the world, who have known for a long time now that they share their mother’s heart with 60 Indian children…

But, ma pellalou also have devoted and courageous parents. Ricky and Pentarao’s parents, already so poor, had big financial problems this year. The older sister got married, and they had to go into debt to pay her dowry and the wedding party, as is customary for the parents of the bride. This explains how having more than one girl is a big burden in India and why there is a lack of 60 millions girls in this country because of aborted female fetuses. Their father also had serious health problems and the family went into debt to pay for the medical expenses. And he can no longer work in the fields. The entire village told them they should put their sons back to work. But they held out, with the courage I have known for years, and the strength of character they have passed on to their sons. We will study the possibility of providing them with a buffalo so that the father could earn money despite his health problems.

Karkik’s mother, so strong and honest, must support her family because her husband is handicapped. She sells fish at the market, and walks for hours, selling fish door to door in the city close to her village. She has shown me her swollen legs. But her three boys are studying and I know that she would do anything for them to finish their studies. Karkik, who is bubbling with intelligence, possesses his mother’s determination and I know that he will succeed in fulfilling his dream of becoming a computer engineer. And his mother will always be the first to speak out at parent teacher meetings about the importance of education.

It is this fierce determination to ensure their child’s education at all costs that has impressed me the most this year. It is a true testament of courage, and sacrifices but also of a profound evolution within the families. These parents, most of who are illiterate and who, a few years ago, at the beginning of our project, did not understand the importance of education, are now so sure of their dreams for their children and have the will to make all the efforts to help them. We have always banked on educating communities, and this year more than ever, I feel as though our work has been successful…

The Smell of India

There is the heat that hits you like a wall, weighs you down and crushes the horizon. There is the dust, a pervasive symbol of this India in its state of semi-demolition, amongst the rubble and ruins of a fleeting splendor. But most of all there is the smell, a spicy mix of sweat, diesel, cow-dung, urine and trash. It creeps into all of your pores, and follows you around like a silent companion.

A sleepy sense in our sterile Western society, the sense of smell is in a constant state of wakefulness here. And it is this sudden addition of a new dimension that destabilizes us more than the sickly sweet intensity of the smell itself.

There are days when this smell makes me sick to my stomach and awakens in me a rejection of all the profound foreignness and troubling nature India holds for me. And there are other days when it fills my heart with all the colors and hopes it promises.

The other night we visited Ammoru in his room at the house he shares with other boys his age, who study at the same college as him. Ammoru, whose younger brother was brought to the Rainbow House after a fishing accident cost him a finger. Ammoru, who we brought back to school on several occasions, after his family went through a rough period after a fishing accident handicapped his father. Ammoru, who always clung to his studies and asked us to send him to boarding school as we were signing him up for the high school close to his village, because the pressure to drop out of school and go work was too great when he lived with his family.

We were sitting in this dark room and we listened to Ammoru tell us about his first year of college, the family problems that disrupted his school year, of his sister who ran away with the boy she loved two days before her arranged marriage, of the dispute with the rejected groom’s family, of the large sum claimed by this family as compensation, and of the financial difficulties all this brought on. We listened to him speak of his ambitions of becoming a teacher, of his end of year exams, and his desire to take computer courses over the summer. I watched his tender and serious face; the face of a young man whose smile still had a hint of childhood in it; I listened to his English which improved so much this year.

And then one of the ever so common black outs plunged us into darkness. Ammoru lit a candle. Songs from a wedding celebration in a nearby house permeated the night. And the smell of India, revived by the night, floated into the room like a promise.

The Schoolgirls of the Rescue Foundation

Here I am in Mumbai for the past two days. I spend a day with the young girls from the Rescue Foundation, our partner in Mumbai with whom we built a training centre for the young survivors of the Mumbai brothels. I attend their classes. Most of these girls were illiterate or undereducated when they first arrived here. They are between 16 and 24 years if age. They are from Nepal, Bangladesh, Calcutta and Assam. While they pour over their math and English books with smiles on their faces, they are waiting for the end of the trials against the brothel owners or sex traffickers, for the end of the legal procedures that will allow them to return to their families and villages.

It’s almost lunchtime and two young girls join their companions in the dining room. They are between 12 and 13 years of age and are charming in their red school uniforms, ribbons of the same red in their braided hair. They are returning from the neighboring school where they study, and shyly pose for the picture.

Mahesh, the Rescue’s project manager, tells me: “Every time I look at these young girls, I am happy because I know that my life has a purpose.” Today I can only see life’s cruelty and absurdity on the faces of these children.

Scenes of Life in Mumbai

I travel on Mumbai’s commuter train morning and evening, for 1H30 from one end of the line to the other if I take the slow train, 1H10 if I have the luck of catching the fast train, that only makes six stops as opposed to twenty five. I go into the Ladies Only Coach, a car reserved exclusively for women, a nice break in a city where in the streets there are 100 men for 1 woman (I counted!).

I like the small universe that is created in the car for the duration of the commute. Students are absorbed in their books. My neighbor is reading Mistress to the Merciless Millionaire (I kid you not!). The farmers are sitting on the floor with their packages. Jewelry, comb and hairclip vendors circulate between the seats. Everyone shops; baskets and boxes are being passed from one seat to the next, displays hang from the handrails. It’s a travelling dollar store… The saleswoman balances two boxes of hairclips on her head on the moving train. A small baby sleeps in a shawl tied across her chest. I notice a tiny brown hand between the folds of fabric.

Between these moments of harmony, there is the rush to get on and off the train. Survival techniques: when getting off, flatten yourself against the wall while waiting for the angry mob to finish storming the car, then jump down onto the platform. To get on, let yourself be mercilessly transported by the pushing and shoving herd while saying a quick prayer to one of the two million Indian Gods. Yesterday, the harpy who gave me a sharp elbow upon getting on the train, gestured apologetically to me once she claimed her spot…

As I’m writing these lines, I’m getting ready to take my train with a certain amount of nervousness. Today, in Mumbai, is the cricket World Cup final between India and their biggest rival, Pakistan. One Indian man told me this morning: ‘‘it’s not a match, it’s a war!’’ The Government declared a national holiday. “India is Holding its Breath” was the headline in the Times of India this morning. And I just read, in that very paper, that there would be a record number of commuters on the very train line I take, since it is this line that leads to the stadium…

Appiyyamma’s Wedding

Appiyyamma is getting married. You might remember her. She was one of our former students who we trained as a seamstress and gave a sewing machine to. We went to visit her in her village. “You will see”, said our social worker, “you will hear her sewing machine. Whenever I come to the village, she is always working.” And sure enough we found her hard at work, sitting at of her sewing machine, surrounded by her nephews and nieces who were playing around her.

She told us about her life, her reputation for the quality of her work in her village and the neighboring villages. The 3,000 to 4,000 rupees ($90) she earns every month, a huge sum of money in these villages. She talked about her wedding. She is getting married in a few months, at the beginning of May, to her cousin (a common practice here). Obviously it is an arranged marriage, decided by her parents. When I asked her if her husband-to-be is a “good man”, she laughed and said she didn’t know. Before marriage ''he’s a good man.'' But afterwards, ''I don’t know... ''

For sure she will leave with her sewing machine. Her fellow villagers expressed their disappointment in losing their seamstress. She is going to the big city where her husband’s family migrated to work on the trawlers that emptied the seabed and forced so many fishermen to permanently or seasonally migrate from the Bay of Bengal.

She is 18 years old and she is getting married. She is still young to be a mother and carry the weight of a family. She is young but for me it’s a victory, because she is 18 and an adult, and her family waited two and a half years after her departure from the Rainbow Centre to marry her off. In these communities where young girls get married as soon as they start menstruating, and where our social workers put so much pressure on families to convince them to postpone the weddings of their girls, this is more than just a small victory.

On my previous visits, one of my main goals has always been to support the education of our social workers and to negotiate with the families of our girls so that they would not be taken out of school and married off as soon as they hit puberty. Over the last two years, we seem to have reached a turning point. I am realistic enough to know that there may still be premature weddings. But it is clear that there has been a profound change and that this automatism has been undone. I like to think our work had something to do with that.