Although exploring rural Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal is not a new experience for me, the Care-WFS fellowship certainly gave me a chance to see the fresh, new face of gender empowerment. It convinced me that in many ways rural women are far ahead of their counterparts in the cities. Take the first story I filed. It took me all the way to UP's Indo-Nepal border in Lakhimpur Kheri. The idea was to find out more about what rural women felt about using female condoms. The experience came as a real eye-opener. For one, there was no false modesty or shame about displaying the use of a female condom. The fact that these condoms could save women from contracting HIV/AIDS was the paramount consideration. "Didi, kya aap mahila condom ka istemaal karna jaanti hain (Sister, do you know how to use a female condom)?" was the direct question put to me. I must confess it left me red in the face.
The woman, who posed the question, seeing my look of discomfiture, quickly brought out a female condom and displayed its use. "This is how you make a figure of eight, which is the perfect design to insert the condom," she explained, not just to me but to the other women gathered there who numbered around 50. And such demonstrations take place every day, with even men coming in to understand how these condoms should be used.
The experience was really something. I have seen college girls in big cities attending lectures on female condoms amidst smiles and giggles. Here were rural women, barely literate and termed as 'behenjis' and 'dehatis' by the city-bred, confidently holding the condoms in their hands and explaining its use. It was a picture of empowerment from rural India.
The story on girls in KGBVs was another revelation. I remember meeting most of these girls a year or two ago, when they were first enrolled in these schools. They were thin and frail looking. They held their heads down and barely spoke. "Tumne school kyun chhodda tha? (Why did you leave school)?" I had asked a young drop-out named Reshma. She had not replied. I was later told that she was a victim of child abuse in her earlier school and that's why her parents did not want her to carry on with her education. Reshma had seen my laptop on that occasion and was too scared to even touch it.
During the visit I made for this fellowship, I realised how totally transformed these girls were. One ran up to me and said, "Namaste didi. Aap toh saal bhar baad aayin mujhse milne (Welcome didi. You have come after a whole year to meet me)," she chuckled as she hugged me. I could not identify her immediately. Chubby cheeks, well-oiled hair and a confident disposition ... could this be Reshma, I asked myself. "Where is your computer, didi? I know you carry it with you," she then asked me. Yes, it was Reshma all right!
The reason for her transformation became apparent soon enough. Reshma is learning to use a computer and she enjoys playing chess on it. A day earlier she, along with 20 other girls of her KGBV class, had beaten up an eve teaser and handed him over to the local police. She has clearly learnt to fight back. And so have many other girls in the school. They have turned into beautiful and confident swans, ready to take flight, fuelled by their ambition. This was yet another wonderful picture of empowerment.
It may take many more years for women in these regions to place their feet firmly on the platform of equality. But the march is on. Of that, I am sure.
