“Aisa lagta hai hum
apne liye jeete hi nahi hai!!”
“Kabhi socha hi nahi ki
mera sapna kya hai, kabhi samay hi nahi mila”
“Nahi pata nahi kya
sapna hai mera”
International Women’s
Day holds a very important place in my heart, not just because I am a woman but
also because few years back when I started my career in Journalism, the first
program that I scripted and produced was for Women’s day, while the rest of the
people were engrossed making special programs on the festival of Holi. And
today when we are hosting ‘Kadam Mila kar chalna hoga’, I am witnessing a big
leap in my life!
‘Kadam Mila kar chalna
hoga’ was organized to celebrate International Women’s Day by
starting the process of dialogue, conversations, and discussions with the women
residing in Dwarka on the issues that concern us as women and as a society. We
had also posted this event on the social media, just to share that we are
celebrating Women’s day. Interestingly at 2.30 pm a Lady along with her mother
came in to attend the event all the way from Noida Extension. At that point, I felt
happy, responsible and also it restated the importance of the discourse that we
were looking to start. One after other women were coming to attend the event
and then around 7 women came together with my mamiji- I always hear that women don’t
form great leaders or there are rare women leader, but for me my mother and my
mami ji had emerged as amazing leaders who not only came for the event but also
motivated others to come to the event with the very basic information about
what will be happening in next few hours!
We
screened “Parched” a very beautiful movie directed by Leena Yadav. The seriousness
in the room was overwhelming; the participants were hooked to the movie. There
were no gossip, all the eyes were fixed on the screen and then there was out
burst of laughter- on the scene where one of the women talks about verbal
abuses being made by man and then she turns the abuses on the opposite gender!
I had already watched Parched, for me- no other movie had talked about women’s
sexuality in this way, at the same time I was in constant dilemma as to how this
group will react to the film! And just when the film ended, there was huge
round of applause in the form of thundering claps, I could see moist eyes,
changing expressions and the dynamics of the room had changed. This was
followed by inviting the participants to share on, ““What
are your feelings, thoughts after watching this film?”
“Disheartening” “This is
happening to each of us, less or more” “We are all suffering from this violence”
“Women are just considered
as baby delivering machines”
“we are modern for
saying, nothing really is different from what is shown in the film and the life
that we live”
“we need to support
each other”
“Why everything that
happens in our live is linked to family’s honor, why do we live with this
burden”
“We are considered sex
slaves, men need us only for sex and his own pleasures, nobody talks about me,
my desires. I feel restricted, for everything that I need to do I have to ask
for permission”
“We women don’t have
respect”
“I loved when the
mother in law treats her daughter in law as her daughter and let her live her
own life”
The film “Parched” talks
about dreams, desires and aspirations of women, we invited the participants to
share on, “What are the dreams that you see at this age of your life?”
It took more than 10
minutes to make them understand that they need to write about the dreams they
see for themselves, the dreams that only belong to them, the whole churning of
facilitating this question to them thinking about it and writing it on the
paper made me wonder “whether our dreams are also gendered?” Even after this process
4 to 5 women couldn’t think for a dream, that says why we need this
International Women’s day so much!
“I want to take out an
hour for myself in a day. I have been thinking about this, but couldn’t do it
till now” shares a teacher, homemaker and mother of 2.
“I want to see people
associated with me happy, I believe in god, so I want to see all the temples
around the country”
“I want a well settled
and happy life, travel around the world”
“Mein khule aasman mein
jeena chahti hoo, puri duniya ghumna chahti hai. Mujhe pahad paani dekhna bahut
accha lagta hai”
“I want to have well
settled life, making my company one of the best, doing seva and travelling
around the world”
One of the woman who
couldn’t think for a dream before, shared that, “I am from Nanital, I always
wanted to travel a lot, but I can’t”
After Mona shared her dream,
two of the women said, “you are already doing that!”
It was an overwhelming
and very interesting experience to co-create a space where participants first
saw the reality through a film, than build discourse around the same and
finally to be able to see things for themselves beginning with a dream!
Also while all of us
proceeded for refreshments, the commonality we discovered through the day
helped not only build conversations but also helping them to be empathetic to
each other’s problems or issues of the life. One such interesting conversations
that would stay with me and motivate me to keep doing what I aspire to do was-
“It seems nothing can
change. There is so much violence, I know this shouldn’t happen but there is no
way out”, shares one participant
“I don’t agree to this,
things are changing. Seeing this younger generations doing this kind of work
that we couldn’t even talk about says a lot” shares another participant.
While there is no much
violence happening all across our country against women, the rape threats given
to women students, the whole environment of fear being created so that women don’t
even dare to come out of their homes, we are trying to build a counter narrative
through Sahas- building community – inviting people to come together, have
conversations, think about themselves and empowering them to build their dreams
and translate them into reality.
Nothing makes me happier
than this and for all those people who think why one day as Women’s day? Why don’t
we celebrate Man’s day? Why Man’s day is not as popular as Women’s day? Why don’t
we celebrate entire year? Please pause and think for yourself that why you are
so resistant towards celebrating the women who gave you birth! Why do you also
crib and talk about problems? It’s because you are still stuck to the shackles
of power and patriarchy, you can’t accept the simple fact that it’s has taken
such a long struggle since 1909 to have this one day- so I request you to
please let your pseudo-intellectual self rest for a day and let women have this one day
to celebrate themselves :-)
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