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| Here's our edition of unequal music - Feb 19, 2008 |
By Kadambini Sharma
I met Seti --- a mother of five children --- while the members of the Tharu community were celebrating the colorful festival of Maghi recently. Sensational news which she had to share with me was she had undergone laparoscopy recently. She was visibly lit up.
This certainly was shocking. A young woman of 21, who, incidentally, was my childhood friend --- had produced five babies. I gathered she lost her charm before she gained any. I knew she was growing to be a beautiful girl among us. But now she was showing age.
I still recall how we used to play together. We shared from everything from toys to emotions of early age. Now she was excited to tell me about her achievement which, of course, was the laparoscopy operation.
She got the name of Seti --- fair in Tharu lingo --- out of the tradition of naming children after their feature and character, among many other things. She was born into a family of kamaiyas, a tradition of bonded labor, banned since but still alive and kicking.
That took me back to my early childhood, which I had spent with her. Although, of course, we used to be together, our ancestral status differed. Then came a time when I left for Kathmandu, although I used to be back regularly during vacation to catch up with childhood friend and, what else, memories.
While I attended school and college away from her, she did not have that opportunity. Out of school, she did not have any idea of the places outside Dang. Meanwhile, Seti was married off when I went back to Dang while still studying in class VII. I could feel that she was a different person with household responsibilities.
I recalled how once she was sucking at her mother's breasts while I had gone back while studying in class III much earlier on. Seti was the youngest of her eight siblings. When I excitedly told my mother that Seti has been married off, she laughed it away, saying it was natural thing to happen with girls in rural parts.
I am also part of the world which is away from Dang. Much like in Dang, I had made friends here too. But I am at loss whenever I compare the aspirations and dreams of my friends from here and there.
Consider, for instance, my friend Mandira. She was born in Kathmandu and into a well off Newar family. What's more, she is in the US now. She had won a scholarship endowed for the benefit of the members of the indigenous community.
While Mandira by all means must be happy for making to the US so early on, Seti is happy thinking that she is not only ahead of times but also conscious about the family size !
When I had returned to Dang two years back, her second last child was 3 weeks old. I had called her up at our house and spent the whole day together. I also went to her place but found her under the influence of home made liquor. Could she be drinking it out of sorrow or happiness?
I had seen her tending potatoes, while one-month-old baby was fast asleep nearby. Then I also saw that she was quarreling with her husband, who, too, was drunk.
Her first child, who is 6 years old, is not doing well at school. "Although I have sent her school remembering my plight, she is not doing well", Seti said by way of lamenting than complaining. I knew she would not have even gone to school, had it not been free.
The reason why her ward could not do well at school could be the environment back home. But I could not tell her anything about it. How could I? But Seti herself soon said perhaps her daughter could do well if send to town as domestic helper with condition that she be send to school.
The flight of Seti and the dilemma she is in about her children soon reminded me of hundred of NGOs and INGOs, which are working in the field of women's right, children's right, safe motherhood and so on and so forth.
Not a day passes in the capital when talkkathons do not take place and declarations passed. Meanwhile this is not the plight of Seti alone. Nearly all Tharu women face the same unequal music. They are married off early, never mind the call against child marriage.
Yet here are women activists, who carry banners and publish special publications coinciding with the International Women's Day and also Children's Day, with fairest degree of regularity. And there is an international community, which goes with what urban NGO activist women say on the issue. Access, it seems, not only counts but still matters.
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