Najma Ba'aji (Women Series - one)

I met Najma ba'aji in October 2008 during a one day workshop with a group from Seelampur Basti. She was accompanying a group of seventy teenage girls on a picnic they had to Qutb-Minar. After the workshop was over, I hitched a ride with the group. The bus was full of energy and excitement. Nothing, not the two o' clock afternoon heat or chaos of the streets was a hindrance to the amount of fun the collective had decided to have that day!

Najma ba'aji and I were sitting together and in that twenty minute ride she hurriedly told me her story, with an openness that was unique and a confidence that was inspiring.

In the last few weeks through the course of a project "A Journey to Find Our Freedom Songs", I've been visiting the New Junta School in Junta Colony, Seelampur regularly. I often bump into Najma ba'aji at the center and haven't helped but notice that when she walks in to the center there's just a flicker of discomfort in the form of silence and cold stares. While the girls are civil they definitely are not happy to see her. But she is least bothered. She comes in and observes our sessions, talks to the girls, at times takes on a self-appointed role of matron with her "matronly" advice. But she is always quick to add, "I have suffered enough. Learn from my story..." obviously the sort of thing that most upsets teenagers anywhere.

She was forcibly married off at a very young age. After having been continuously harassed by her in-laws for more dowry she returned to her village near Chandigarh. Her mother could offer her no shelter, only sympathy for her "sorry fate" and the advice that she should return to her husband's home and get used to his violence and harassment. Today, when she spoke of this incident to me, there was a slight tremor in her voice and some regret. She was hurt then that her parents turned their backs on her when she needed them. At the time she could only react by saying that she would never return to their house again. But neither did she go back to her husband's house. Instead she made her way to Delhi. Here she soon married another man, in the hope of some security. Her second husband was a smack addict and being unable to cope with his addiction she too got hooked on to the drug. She did smack for fourteen years. After her husband died, she chose to be part of a rehabilitation program run by an NGO in Seelampur. She has been off the drug for the last five years. In this time she met Ahmed bhai and married him. He plies a rickshaw for school children. He's also been active with AITUC in Seelampur. While she has been working with an NGO as an HIV/AIDS peer officer in the area. She talks to women about HIV/AIDS, encourages them to get tested. She provides the first level of support through counseling to women who have tested positive and helps them to access medical treatment. Her role in the community is obviously not a very popular one. She faces immense amount of pressure from both men and women. She openly shares her own life experiences with young girls who face high risks in the area and continuously talks to them about the importance of finishing their education and finding means to be economically independent. Her work isn't easy under the circumstances and many young girls are told not to speak with her by their family members.

Even though she hasn't taken any sort of drugs in the last five years Najma ba'aji says that for her to stay off the drugs is a daily battle. Apart from the many repercussions of repeated abuse, on her health now, she also worries about the anger within her that has long been repressed and what may happen if she couldn't control it someday. She is absolutely clear that she's been a victim of the world and its "social order" for too long now, to care anymore what others think of her. She thanks Allah, for another chance at life. She recalls the names of people, who were once fellow addicts, who didn't make it or have long since disappeared without anyone bothering to look for them. She believes the reason she has been given this new lease of life is because she has some important work left to do and that her involvement with the women in the community of Seelampur is that work. Despite the irritable teenagers, who don't want any advice and are rarely grateful for her help, she continues to be there. Cracking jokes, never mincing any words, always welcoming, independent, radiating an invincibility that is at once reassuring and yet mysterious, Najma ba'aji is one of the most inspiring women I have ever met. And I am sure that the young girls whose lives she affects today will also say the same thing of her, some day, many years from now.

Ghoomakkad Toli - A Community Arts Project

For the last couple of months I have been doing a community arts project funded by Khoj at Khirkee village, in New Delhi. The premise for the Ghoomakkad Toli is that people especially children have a fantastic ability and need to make and play out stories. This process helps to construct ideas, reaffirm what we are taught at school, experiment with relationships through the “safe distance” of drama while giving us the power to re-imagine the world and the roles we play in it, as we would like it. Spaces that we play in often direct the theme and nature of our dramatic games. While the games themselves become natural and fun means to make spaces around us come alive.As cityscapes rapidly change and class dominates how children play in or imagine their world the Ghoomakkad Toli has been working with children to create and document their memories of group play. Essentially to make a body of site-specific performance work that acknowledges their surroundings and their relationship with these spaces at a particular time in our lives.

Ghoomakkad Toli has been a really exciting project, with its fair share of challenges (some that I definitely was not expecting). The children who are participating are very enthusiastic and come to the sessions loaded with an energy that is at times hard to keep up with. On certain days it feels like atleast a couple of the kids have been running through an entire session of an hour and a half!! Therefore it isn't surprising that their favorite sessions have actually been the ones where they've had to keep still for the whole time, painting stories about Khirkee that they have made. They want to keep returning to the painting exercises.

We chose the Khirkee Masjid for our performance because it has an aura to it that captivates the imagination of not only the children in the community but the adults too. Most parents don't want their kids going to the masjid to play. The roof of the Masjid does not have high enough railings so they fear that some one is bound to fall off. However obviously, the more the kids are told to not go there the more they insist on playing in the Masjid. Some of the boys absolutely love to chase bats that live within the domes inside. The darkest crevices in the Masjid are their favorite haunts. While outside they play cricket and try all sorts of acrobatics, by climbing the high walls and jumping down from great heights (explaining that it isn't very safe to do that falls on deaf ears!).

So it was natural to build a story around the Khirkee Masjid (that all the kids call खिड्की का किला ). The story was made through a series of story circles where the children added their bits to the story as it went round the circle. घुमक्कड़ टोली की पहली कहानी can give any blockbuster a run for its money! It is set in an unknown past, where two kings battle for supremacy. The king who wins (महरोली का राजा ) is greedy and too full of himself. He's cursed by a seer that his son will destroy him. The king doesn't take the seer seriously. A son is born and grows up to be a fine warrior, in a hurry to ascend the throne. So he does murder his parents and crowns himself king. However the parents begin to haunt the new king, who in turn invites another seer to perform a big "sacrifice" to capture these ghosts...

To know how the story ends come to the Ghoomakkad Toli performance in July. :-)

The most exciting thing that this project has done is broken some of the barriers based on caste/class/ and ethnicity, in the Khirkee community. At least for the children. When we began their were little factions and some kids who refused to hold hands with other kids. They would constantly tell me to get rid of these kids, because they were no good, and would only bring trouble. We continued anyway. However by the third week they'd forgotten about not holding each others' hands. They were even making jokes and laughing together. Now if one of them doesn't show up someone will insist on going to his house to find out what's up with him.

I don't know if at the end of the project the kids will continue to be friends with each other or play with each other. Or whether they will go back into their camps as their parents have taught them to. But I think if even for a few months they have been able to overcome these harsh and unfair barriers built long before their time, they have made a success of the Ghoomakkad Toli!!

Tree of Life

The owl in this image can be found on thaneeya.com

The "Tree of Life" has always been fascinating to me. I remember we had a beautifully embroidered but rather faded "Tree of Life"
that would hang in the living room, when I was a child. Everytime I would pass by that wall-hanging a sense of mystery and intrigue would find me. It wasn't till much later that I learnt the significance of "The Tree of Life" that has emerged through time, inspiring some of the most amazing art and literature that we possess today.
Trees in general and the "The Tree of Life" in particular have a spiritual and mystical resonance in all world cultures. According to the Encyclopedia of Myths, "in myths and legends from around the world, trees appear as ladders between worlds, as sources of life and wisdom, and as the physical forms of supernatural beings". No wonder then the number of stories we have heard as children about different trees. One of my favorites from childhood was on how the Parijat came to be. While I have forgotten the details here is my version of it.

A beautiful apsara once lived in the Sun's court. He fell passionately in "lust" with her. Of course he made a pass at her and well who could refuse the Sun God?! So they had a torrid affair. Eventually this God (who seems rather human) got bored. He dumped this gorgeous and intelligent apsara. Unfortunately she had quite fallen in love with this idiot! (so maybe she wasn't so smart), and her heart was completely broken. But after a rather painful period of grieving for this worthless man she was filled with anger and rage at her humiliation. All she thought of was how she could get back at him somehow, while also renewing her self-esteem. So she went to the Moon and asked his help to put in action a plan she had.

The thing is like most women everywhere, the apsara believing that this man she had fallen in love with loved her in return, for the person she was, had quite forgotten to think about herself. As they say "she let herself go", which by the way only made her more beautiful, but only someone who thought with his head (and not with his dick) and talked to a woman's face (instead of at her breasts), would have been able to see that. So part of the apsara's plan now was to make some changes, both internal and external to who she was. She asked the Moon to give her a makeover, which did involve some violence in the sense that first she'd have to die. The Moon granted her this wish, and buried the dead apsara on earth. From that soil grew a tree which bore the most beautiful and fragrant white flowers with orange centers. The flowers blossomed each evening after dusk and fell each morning at dawn.
The Sun still wishes he could meet this beautiful and intriguing Parijat, that everyone seems to talk about, but no matter how early he rises the Parijat is always gone.

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When I work with groups one of the exercises I do with almost everyone is the "Tree-As-Self" exercise. This is a drawing (painting) exercise in which the participants are asked to draw themselves as a tree - any kind of tree, with as many colors, and in any shape that they choose to. I often find that in a group there are only a couple of participants who can wholly visualize themselves as a special tree. I did this exercise recently with a group of young women I work with, and found that out of thirty-six girls there was only one who drew a tree without anything else on the sheet. All the others drew a small tree (in the center or side of the sheet) and filled up the rest of the sheet with hills and gardens and houses. While the paintings were beautiful yet they said so much more about the group. I realized that these young women are unable to see themselves as individuals and this has huge ramifications on the choices they are making or will make in their lives. This exercise is usually repeated in between and towards the end of the project, and many arts-based therapists use it as an evaluation tool. Since one of the project's goals is to help the women to become more self reliant (both in terms of livelihood as well as emotionally and mentally) and have a larger stake in their own lives and the decisions they take, I hope that we shall find that the "tree of their own life" will be more complete, evergreen, with stronger branches and deeper roots and providing shade more, than receiving it.

Serious Birds