Monday, Dec. 11, 2006

Where do I begin?

I am picked up at about 9am by a driver who will take me and a van full of children to the Sandipani Muni School. We bump down the unpaved road, dust clouding up in the early morning sunlight.

What I see upon our arrival is a total contrast to everything I have seen in Vrindavan thus far. There are children, hundreds of them, running to and fro with backpacks and sacs full of books and school supplies. They are all smiling, laughing, happy to be at school and eager to learn.

I meet Rupa, with whom I have been corresponding for several months about the photo project. He greets me warmly.

The children who attend SMS are the poorest of the poor, he tells me later. They live in shanties. Many have anemia, showing the characteristic bleached-looking hair as a result. One or both parents are illiterate.

At SMS they receive nutrition, medication and education. The school cares for the children and their families, Rupa explains.

There are hundreds of children on a waiting list. Someone goes to these children’s homes to investigate, and oftentimes they are let in if their family demonstrates sufficient need.

As I sit and speak to Rupa, children swarm around me. They are fascinated by my camera and the fact that images can be replayed so quickly. “Take my picture!” they shout in Hindi. They pose with groups of friends and eagerly look at my LCD screen to see the results.

After school begins Rupa takes me on a tour. There are primary and secondary schools. Students are taught from kindergarten all the way up through 12th grade, and then they are given vocational training.

For girls, the educational journey is often cut short. Even though the Indian government has passed a law banning child marriage, that does not stop it from happening. Girls are married as young as 7. Rupa tells me that girls he sees in school one day are gone the next, young victims of child marriage. They have no hope to continue their education then.

He wants me to do a project on the female issue, of which child marriage is only a part. What exactly is the female issue?

It starts at birth. If a boy is born, everybody celebrates and is happy; if a girl is born, she is seen as a burden. Having a girl means eventually having to pay a dowry. Money the family is pressed to find.

So this is why there are high rates of infanticide with baby girls. Rupa tells me he once came across a baby girl covered in flies and soot. She would not have lived another day if not taken to the hospital, he said. The girl spent 5 days at the hospital, and her mother refused to come at all during that time, saying she was too busy. Finally, when the girl was well, the mother came to the hospital to pick her up. Seeing that she was well, she turned to Rupa and said, “You made her better. Now you pay the dowry.”

The younger a girl is married, the smaller the dowry the family has to pay. So if the girl survives until she is 7, 8, 9, she is married off. Marrying a girl at the legal age of 18 would be much too expensive.

Sometimes, the dowry the bride’s family pays is insufficient. They will give the groom’s family a scooter that has only partially been paid for. When it comes time to make the rest of the payments, they say to the groom’s family, the girl is with you now. She is responsible.

So the girl is punished for the money her family could not procure. Sometimes she cannot take it and commits suicide. Because she cooks for her in-laws, she has access to kerosene. Some girls light themselves on fire and burn to death.

If the girl does survive the beginning of the marriage, she becomes a slave to her in-laws. She cannot go to school. She cooks, cleans. She has babies of her own and cares for them. No one practices birth control here, so often couples have 5 children or more.

Husbands do not share their earnings with their wives or families, so the wives often have to find work of their own. They spend their days out in the fields or doing other menial work. They leave their children to fend for themselves. The eldest child is usually in charge. You can see it at the school, even: Older girls chaperoning their little siblings around.

Then the cycle repeats itself. The children are married, and the bitter, degrading process begins again.

One might argue that the final stage of the female issue is widowhood. Once their husbands die, the women, having nothing, lead lives of begging and prayer. They get painful arthritis from the mineral-laden water they drink and cataracts from the smoke from the cow dung they use as kindling.

And many blame themselves for this bitter life.

*****

Before lunch, Rupa takes me to a nearby shantytown. Many of the SMS children come from areas like these.

Children run about, half-naked. They play in the contaminated water. They are caked in dust. For homes, the families here have mere plastic sheets over their heads. Shards of clothing form the walls.

The children run up to me, as at the school, and beg me to take their pictures. I photograph one little boy who is balanced on his sister’s hip. His face is covered in flies.

“See this?” Rupa asks, running his fingers through a girl’s bleached-looking hair. “They don’t have blondes in India.” Many of the children in this area are anemic.

****

We head back, and soon it is time for lunch. The nutritious meal is something called kitchri: cooked rice, lentils and other vegetables. The meal is plopped in front of me on a placemat made of woven leaves.

Nirguna, who I have met up with earlier in the morning, asks me if I want a spoon. No, I say. I dig in like everyone else around me, eating the kitchri with my hands and cracker pieces.

After lunch the children play in the schoolyard. Here there are piles of dirt and rocks. The secondary school is still under some construction.

Children swarm around me, and, in another corner of the schoolyard, they swarm around Rupa. He holds a little girl who wants attention.

I leave later in the afternoon with a guide and translator who will show me around Vrindavan and show me some of the widow communities.

We zip through the narrow, dusty streets on a scooter. Camera bag and purse balanced carefully in front of me, I hold on for dear life. We have several near run-ins with rickshaws and pedestrians.

We visit several places where widows are living. In the final place, they are willing to talk. I record some of their stories in my notebook and snap photos. My guide translates.

One woman tells of how she came here and then lost all of her children and her husband. Now she can barely move and lives in a room with little light or ventilation. She and the rest of the widows here earn about 5 or 6 rupees a day, the equivalent of a few cents in the US. She still has to pay rent of about 100 rupees a month.

For the death of all of her children and the rest of her misfortunes, she blames herself, she says.