I want to recap what I’ve learned about young women in India, and some of my thoughts on “womanhood” around the world, in general. It’s a little long, I get carried away sometimes!

The girls i work with at the center are – as I’ve said – balls of energy, song, laughter, physical contact, kindness, curiosity, giggling, boy crazy, self-conscious, jealous, dramatic, creativity and budding adult thought. They are like all young women the world around.

These Indian girls do have their particular sets of cultural & familial expectations & challenges. They grow up with the knowledge that “Your family loves you & holds you in their heart and always will, but you will be married and move into your husbands family’a house and they will be your REAL family from that day on & forever more.” Weddings can be up to a week long affair, including a ceremony when the girl leave her parents house forever…. There are photos taken for the wedding album and this grief is so real & painful. The parents tears are wrenching & girls fright and supressed panic read so clearly. 

There are howver families who do not care much for daughters.. They exist to help around the house, and then be married off for a dowry & to be someone else’s servant. The all know the reality of bride burnings, results of “kitchen accidents.” What a way to live… Knowing this from your earliest memories.

The girls at the womens center surely range the whole gamut. Some have “boyfriends” they mention in whispered giggles. (the relationship mostly consists of phonecalls or SMS, and occassional lunch meetings. No physical contact ever). But to the girls, this is real love they feel in their hearts, just as you & I do. And they know they will be married to another man of their parents choosing… And that hopefully, eventually, maybe, love will grow between them. 

Parkashi, who told me I am her lifetime friend & big sister (didi), told me that her ex-boyfriend cheated. I don’t know what constitutes that in their social world (calling another girl? More?), but she said “my heart – dil – my heart it….” she then clasped her hands together & ripped them apart. “Heartbreak” I said in English, “I understand… Same for me & my ex. Listen to me – bataiyeh – your didi…. In time, time passes, your heart will come together again” and I put her hands in mine & folded them back together. Her huge deep brown luminous eyes were skeptical & full doubt. “no, didi, never. No man.. Never again. I will get job. Move to america for job. I will do mehendi (henna) for your wedding one day. No man for me.”

I love her spunk & strength & idealism…. But I twinge in my heart at the reality I know. Her father makes very little money; she cooks all the meals. She is about 20, and will no doubt be married off soon to a man she doesn’t know. Most girls accept this fate; I pray she doesn’t dissolve, I pray that she won’t lose all faith.

But today the girls have a few years to be GIRLS, without mother-in-law problems and babies. 

They come to the center to learn job skills, and the beauty teacher says many of her girl have found jobs at salons (”saloons” they say) a hair dressers, Doing nails, bridal makeup & mehendi. They love makeup like every other girl in the world… Their radiant brown skin becomes tinted with pink eye shadow and the dark black eyeliner makes them exotic looking & stunning. The know howto bat their eyes coyingly & wink at one another in practice flirtation. They make realistic roses from yellow paper. They embroider peacocks and flowers on bits of cloth.

And they try hard (well… The ones not busy gossiping!)… To learn computers. Right now they are making spreadsheets of a classes grades. Students names, class names & grades, totals, minimums, maximums, percents. Pretty decent formula skills, but education is so rote here… I wonder if they understand what they’re doing or simply parroting.

I have ideas for them to try… But the computer teacher doesn’t like them straying off topic & spends her afternoons on her cell phone texting.

Most of the “schooling” is lax… Yes there are exams & passing, but the day to day routine is hardly a routine. Curriculum & lesson plans don’t factor into this world. 

The director, a tiny outspoken middle-aged woman named Laxmi, does wonderful work. She started this center, in the 4 shabby stained rooms with curtain dividers. The girls are all young & unmarried, most have maybe a 4th grade education. Some whisper to me that they made it all tye way to grade 12 and want an MBA… I squeeze their heads and whisper back “such a smart girl!” I try never to compliment physical beauty: Indian women live in a world super-saturated by emphasis only on their looks. Fair skin, slender frame & waist length thick black hair are the pinacle of beauty. The darker girls are picked on, even by teachers. All girls & women will spend a lifetime buying “whitening cream” for their skin. The girls with curly hair try to hide it by slicking it down with oil & very tight braids. 

I compliment, instead, them for being smart, funny, clever, sweet, kind, for sharing, for being a good friend, for working hard, for being creative. I like the bashful smiles I get when I say these things. My favorite is to tell them they are smart… For the ones who do, and will always, live hard supressed lives, I couldn’t stand for them to never once feel they are smart or worthy. 

Laxmi now also has women “in the field”, in the very horrifying slums,  teaching basic hygiene, child care, etc. And she is beginnig a basic education course for older women – totally neglected by ngo’s typically – it’s all for children. So Laxmi wants to give them a fixed curriculum which will bring their reading & writing skills up to 4th grade level. A very useable level for their environment.

Being a woman anywhere is complex. Women all over the world fill the  range of daughter, sister, wife, mother. girlfriend, friend, best friend, cousin and neice, grandmother, employee or boss. We can be at once a 1 dimensional female to be looked at by men, and a multidimensional woman of potential and talent and wisdom. Keepers of the home & children & matriarch, and yet a voiceless subservient to the whims of men in authority.

Each culture & country has is own particular forms of womens empowerment & strength, and disabilities & injustices.

India has a woman at the head on the country. Indian women risk being burned by hot oil for not being a suitable choice for marriage.

I applaud those who help all around the world to fight injustices & mistreatment of children who cannot speak for themselves; for those who protect our world & natural environment so that our earth will be healthy and life sustaining; for those who work tirelessly to ensure all people are able to worship & pray in the way they want to in peace.

The rights of women an girls to be empowered & know their own self-worth strikes a particular chord in me. I have been given the singularly, unimaginable gift of being born a woman in America, to parents who encouraged and celebrated my growth as a woman of potential, creativity & choice. I have tears pricking my eyes at the knowledge of how rare a gift this is. Most women in the world have no frame of reference for this… They cannot even understand the notion that they can DO something – or anything – besides be a wife & mother subject to her husband, father or mother-in-law.

So here I am. In the chaos of India. With silly laughing singing girls who braid my hair and have me teach them to say “You are funny.” in English. This almost a pitance.. A token of effort to that which I dream of. I hope – for my own vanity’s sake – that at least one girl is smiling at the fun day she had on her walk home to cook dinner.