Challenging violence on each step and still standing tall with hope sand dreams!

“My daughter was killed by her husband, he strangled her. She didn’t want to go, I could have stopped her. She had dreams! We are fighting a court case against her husband. I have to run here and there. I try to stay positive but she won’t come back!”

As part of #16daysofactivism, we collaborated with My Perch to co-create a sharing space for women from Barola community, inviting them to share their experiences of gender based violence, pain and struggles of womanhood and how do they gather strength to face these challenges on daily basis. We have worked with women from different age groups, different geographical locations and class for example women from rural area in Baghpat, women from middle class in Dwarka. However this set of women were lot different and so it was important for us to understand their context in order to create a space where they feel safe enough to share!

Most of the women who live in Barola have come from different villages and towns of India. Many of them live with very violent husband who drinks alcohol, beat their wives and children and don’t give a penny in the family. Some of them have husband who has another family with other women, they still chose to live with them despite the fact he just boss around and contribute nothing. Some of them are single as either their husband have died or left. Women living in the slum community are very vulnerable to all the forms of violence, the importance of having a male figure in their family has a totally different objective – one being protecting them from other men in the community to jump on them or their children.

So whether their husband is violent or living with other women, they stick with them so that other men don’t look at them as prey! It’s a very twisted and challenging situation. These experiences have made some of them so hard that now they don’t give a damn about men. They beat the men who try to fight them and also indulge in drinking. Unfortunately even then men don’t stop, they take advantage of them by pointing fingers, and their own children despise them leaving them distressed. This set of women showed a clear intersection of gender and class where the latter dominated their identity making their lives more difficult.

Keeping in mind the context and vulnerability we designed a sharing space where they could share their experiences of being a woman living in poverty, experiences of violence and what keeps them going despite all these challenges!

The session began with a brief introduction, what will happen in next 2 hours and ground rules to make this space ambient for sharing. In the first activity, the participants were invited to share their names and one quality. With the shy smiles, giggles and reluctance some shared and few just stopped after saying their names. The answers were heartwarming like ‘I love dancing’, ‘I enjoy doing funny things’, ‘I like doing fun things with kids so I come here too’

This was followed by game of ‘wolf and sheep’ where women participated with uninhibited enthusiasm. It was amazing to watch them play sheep and get away from the circle of wolf with strength and wit, at the same time playing wolf and not letting sheep get away!

In the next activity, the participants were invited to share one thing that they hear constantly or randomly because they are woman:

‘You stay at home! What do you do? Same thing is asked not just by husband but also kids.’

This statement actually broke the barrier that was stopping few of them from actually sharing. Every woman in the circle agreed unanimously that they do all the household chores, take care of family in every possible way and their work never stops but all they hear is what do they actually do staying at home?

‘Why are going out, what will you do outside home?’

‘I don’t like staying at home at all. It’s boring and annoying’

‘I had to always hear taunts and comments, whether it is from my in laws, husband or children. No one seems to be happy with what I do!’

‘You always think about yourself. So self-centered, don’t care about anyone else!’

‘There are times when we work outside at our jobs. Even for small mistakes, I am scolded, it becomes more evident because I am a woman. People just assume that we don’t have brains or are incapable because we are women. It is frustrating and I do get angry but we don’t even get space to vent out even in our homes. Why? Because woman are not even allowed to express anger! I am a human being, tough situations at work and home can make me angry.’

The discourse on gender based violence began with the question ‘Can you share any incident where you did something when you didn’t want to?’

‘What happens in villages is that they want a girl who is from well to do family, is educated and beautiful. Despite all these criterion, they want the girls to do all the chores in the household, most of the work is done by hand like making flour from wheat by hand swing, making cow dung cakes etc. I never wanted to do this but I had to because I was married in a rural area.’

‘My 17 year old son beats me. He is always on phone who gets angry on very minor things and loses his cool. He was alright till last year, but don’t know what happened! I keep my distance and he is strong that I just can’t save myself. I try to calm him down. But sometimes all the situations just get too much. I feel like leaving everything and just run away. Many a times, I just want to hang myself and get rid of all these miseries’

‘I was 14 years old when I was married off. I didn’t even know what marriage was at that time and neither was I expert in cooking. So for every small or big mistake, my mother in law used to scold me, taunt me and blame my maiyka for not teaching me anything. Days passed and my husband bought us here, we had children one after another. We didn’t even have money to fill our stomach, my husband was doing nothing just drinking and assaulting me. There was time when I went for entire week eating plain rice and that was the time I realized it was enough if I don’t take charge then we would be stuck like this forever. I wasn’t educated somehow I got a job for Rs 1500, my kids were really small, so while I used to be at job, they used to roam around here and there with no one to look after. Those were really tough time, but I decided that my life was better here, so I would do anything in my power to live here and raise my kids in better condition. Now I earn 12000, we are so much better leading a better life. My kids are educated and doing well! I just wish that my daughter find a better sasural and groom’

Following this, we invited them to share on ‘Have you ever challenged someone or any situation where you were forced to do something that you didn’t want to do?’

A very inspiring and courageous story was shared by a woman –

‘There was a fight in my home, everyone was running towards me to beat me – my husband, my in-laws and those who were not coming to beat me were standing like statue just watching and doing nothing. That moment I said enough is enough, if anyone dares to raise hand, I will do the same. If I am gonna die today then I will make sure others die along with me. I fought, retaliated in every possible way. My brother came to rescue me and so I left my in laws house for good with a very clear thought that I will never come back here. I worked hard, made living for myself and my kids. I still go back to my town for work, but I don’t even look at them. My ex-husband loiters around does nothing and here I am! I am not scared anymore.’

The smile and confidence on her face says so much about her struggles and what she has achieved. With all this, we engaged on  gender based violence and emphasized again and again as to how it is not their fault that they have been violated but the fault of the person who did violence. It was equally crucial to state that as woman we have been forced to internalize violence and think that it’s our fault or that we are not good enough for people because of which you end up believing it. So, we as women can stop this by understanding that we can and we should say NO to the violence!

It was exhilarating to hear how voices of women became loud and louder with each time they said that ‘THEY WON’T TOLERATE GENDER BASED VIOLENCE IN ANY FORM’

There was this lady with a kid, she was nervous and was kind of reluctant to sit in the circle. She wanted to go early saying that she has lot of work at home including washing dishes. But she never left, instead kept listening to what we all were sharing and I saw her crying many a time. So it’s not really important that everyone should share in form of words, because people have different form of expressions. Her voice was the loudest when we were saying No to the violence!

We closed the session by inviting women to share their dreams one after another while all of us clapped!

‘I wish to travel to different places’

‘I want to build a home where I could live with my children and my husband won’t be allowed here’

‘I want to have my own home where I live on my own! And I don’t want to marry’

‘I want to build a home near ocean’

‘I want to be like you, help people and make them smile’

The circle was bubbling with positive energy, happiness and hope! These women have suffered so much, they were challenging violence on daily basis, despite that they have zeal, hope and openness!

I feel so grateful and thankful for each of these women who trusted this space to share their experience. I just hope that women understand that they are strong and they have this choice to say no to violence even if that person is their husband, son or any relative. It is not okay for anyone to raise their hands to express anger or any frustration.