STORM CHASER CHIRASREE ON CLOUD 9:

AN AMAZING PASSION OF A CITY GIRL AND HER DARING GROUP KOLKATA CLOUD CHASERS

Chirasree surely reminds me of Hollywood actress Helen Hunt, who played the role of University Professor Dr Jo Harding, who chased one of the greatest storms of the century along with her under-funded team of students in Twister. Chirasree might not have the sophisticated devices like the Westerners, but she has a burning passion that match the divine fury of the storms and the clouds that bring along the message of an incoming cyclone or a storm.

Since childhood Chirasree has been passionate about clouds and their different shapes and sizes. Their haunting mystery always attracted her. This passion of cloud gazing became more intense when she chanced upon Meghdoot of Rabindranath Tagore and Kalidasa's Meghdootam, while in college. Both these famous literary wonders carry the message of clouds and the stories of the thousand lands they float across. The need to know their stories and capture them through lens gave birth to Chirasree’s out-of-the world passion and she started chasing clouds.

Since 2012, she started viewing weather apps on smart phones. She teamed up with friend and fellow chaser, Debarshi Dutta Gupta, and the duo regularly used to check the weather apps and started tracking clouds, storms, cyclones.

In March 2014 her group Kolkata Cloud Chasers was born with a few photographers who preferred cloudscapes/stormscapes. Debarshi’s craziness about clouds was a sheer encouragement. Today, the group follows live streaming, photos, Vblogs by US Tornado chasers. But India's weather pattern is more interesting than USA. So Chirasree took up the task of studying reports on tropical supercell, monsoon, tropical cyclones in the Indian weather perspective.  
A typical cloud chasing exercise begins with IMD satellite images, IMD Radar Images that are regularly checked to see if there is any storm brewing. Tracking work begins when there is a chance of system formation - how it may form, direction, height etc. There are Spotters who are supposed to look at the sky from the office balcony, windows, house terraces etc to find out if there is a chance of storm formation. Then comes the Navigation part and finally Storm Chasing. All memebers of the group may not go for chasing at a time. But they provide guidance. Successful tracking is indeed an act of joy, pleasure & excitement and Chirasree doesn’t feel being a woman has been a limitation in this crazy pursuit of clouds ever.

Cloud chasing has its own dangers and rewards. She has individually and successfully chased different systems at places like Pedong, Puri, Shillong, Bolepur, Bakkhali and many other locales. Chirasree relives a particular chase in Puri where she experienced one of the best formation of supercell and shelf clouds. The system arrived from the opposite side of the sea. She had focused her camera and took considerable danger of being knocked off by the waves as the sea turned pretty rough. Besides such heavenly experiences, she has often been chased by cows while clicking at muddy fields, snakes passing by, other hostile flora and fauna threatening her ar every step.

Funding a passion like this is indeed another challenge. It’s purely arranged by the members of the group from their own pockets. Basic instruments are smartphones, laptops, good software, camera, lenses, filters, tripod and GoPro camera. KCC  members are not full time storm chasers. There are IT Professionals, businessmen, and freelance photographers.
Chirasree’s encouragement is none other than Tagore’s song Jhor ke aami korbo mitey, dorbo na taar bhrukutite.. dao chhere dao ogo aami toofan pele banchi (Nature’s fury is my kin, storm is my companion, I will dare its fury, not get scared off and will live for all the storms to come).

Those who are interested to follow the group can log on their their FB page and Twitter for exciting weather updates, photos, Vblog and documents.

SINGLE DADS ROCK!!!

AN AMAZING SINGLE DADS’ GROUP IN KOLKATA SPEAK ON THEIR CHALLENGES, INSECURITIES AND BONDING

Well, they are not like Tom Hanks of Sleepless in Seattle or Will Freeman of About A Boy, hunting down the town or joining single parent’s groups to get their daughters a new mother. Instead, an amazing bunch of single dads in the city have set up a group that meets once in a while to help them become the great daddy-mommy combo to their doting daughters. 

Arnab Dasgupta,  Tirtha Chatterjee, Gaurav Sengupta and Randhir Gupta, quite often kick up a storm over a plate of fowl cutlet at Mitra Café or at a Coffee Shop round the corner, not to discuss about job life or pretty women, but to brainstorm on issues impacting their teenage daughters and how to tackle the problems if any. They are a bunch of single dads who chose to remain single instead of getting new mothers to their daughters.

They had all met by chance and by a twist of fate they became the best of buddies, starting off the Single Dads Group more as a necessity. Arnab first met Tirtha, fondly known as Tintin at the gym and while interacting, realised they both were single parents. While, Tintin came across Gaurav hunting for a decent creche for his daughter and the trio became a team. Gaurav bumped into Randhir or Randy on a business trip. Small world, but the great dads met and decided to start off meeting on and often as a means to cope with the various problems that a dad single-handedly raising a kid in India might face. It was like buddy bonding, it was like sharing your insecurities, like tying a bond where least it was supposed to be. 

All the dads have demanding sales jobs. So finding time to meet, itself is a challenge. “We meet mostly once a month usually on a Friday evening. We have been out along with our children too a couple of times, when they are free. Over the years, these dads have realised that being a single parent is tougher than being a single dad. The whole dimension changes when one is a single father specially to a growing daughter.

As the Single Dads Group puts in: “Things are more edgy for single fathers as men lack the suave competency of a mother at large. We often discuss daily challenges and their innovative solutions. We are at a threshold where our daughters are going through emotional and physical changes, they are growing teenagers mostly and as a male counterpart to a ‘mother’, we keep on rapidly adapting ourselves to those changes and make ourselves better parents.” The discussions mostly include educating each other about the approach to train their daughters on subjects like ‘good and bad touch,’ explaining their financial limitations so that they can cope with peer pressure, substance or other abuse, abstain using profane language and most importantly trying to educate them with their limited acquired knowledge to get ready for the first step into womanhood which the four of them term as ‘The various stages of changing diapers.’

But well, every household needs a woman anyway. And the single dads do get the support of their mothers who are a sort of default mothers to their grand daughters. “But definitely they are old now and what should we do when they pass away is a big question these days!” adds one of the members.

The group members also have another challenge, financial insecurity. Despite being eligible professionals, all of them had to make a lot of adjustments (they don’t use the word sacrifice, as they believe it demeans the entire purpose of parenting) in careers and settle for jobs which would enable them to give more time to groom their daughters and try and be physically present with them as much as possible, a work that is usually done by mothers in our society. In the process they had to give up lucrative jobs and fat salaries, something that daddies out in India living within a complete family circle hardly have ever done. When the purse strings tighten, the basic lifestyle has to remain the same. At times, it's a big challenge trying to explain to the kids why their dads can’t give them an expensive holiday that their friends so often enjoy.

Insecurities also include getting prepared for behavioural changes of their daughters, coping up with endless questions on uncomfortable topics including sex, getting prepared as better mentors, to tame the rebellious streak of budding teenagers without losing cool, playing the Fragile Mother's role and lastly getting prepared to accept the blame that if their mothers were around, they could have been better trained and counselled. 

Indian Society took centuries to accept the concept of Single Mothers. Single Father is a rarity because most of the fathers are considered as epitome of achievement by virtue of being a male child and taught by the society that a man's job is never to rear a child. The very thought of rearing a child by a man alone sends shivers. But if one has the conviction like these dads have that 'its my child and it’s my duty to rear them,' then they can definitely handle a child better than their counterparts in the West. Infrastructure support is however lacking in our country at large in terms of creche, day boarding etc.

And yes these dads have given up their desires for the sake of their daughters. As Arnab puts in: “I expect my child to be a normal sane human being who would possess the capability of judging what's good or bad for her. I would like her to be independent to take appropriate decisions for herself.  Relationships didn't work for any of us although we did give our best shot trying to give a complete family to them. The four of us have lived our life at 40 and have no regrets. If being single, brings solace to our daughters and they feel secure, we are happy being so. We just want our children to be happy and will never allow our desires to come in the way.”

But, they will not hold their children back at old age. “Our job is to prepare them to fly high, to meet their aspirations in life rather than cage them. Personally, I have no regrets in life. I have hugged loneliness & celibacy long back as my lone companion. A priest long back told me at a church in Athens  Had God given a fair chance to your daughter, she could have chosen better parents on her own. The least you should try is to prove your worth as a parent.

And that’s what these single dads are doing for sure. 

THANK GOD I AM NOT A WOMAN FROM THE LANDS OF BOKO HARAM OR ISIS, I AM NOT SOLD IN OPEN MARKETS,  PASSED FROM ONE MAN TO THE OTHER, REPEATEDLY RAPED AT 12, SUBJECTED TO BEAR CHILDREN AT 14 TO CONTINUE THE SAVAGE IDEOLOGY OF CREATING A MUSLIM STATE!

“They have already killed my body. They are now killing my soul.” That’s how the 17-year-old Yazidi girl held captive by the ISIS terrorists spoke to an Italian journalist from one of the prisons in Iraq. Pretty that she was, she could have been signed off for a role in Hollywood. Instead, she was a sex slave to men who in the name of religion are plundering women in the 21^st century under the very glare of the Western media.

She is Mayat, the voice of hundreds of girls from the ISIS and Boko Haram states of Iraq, Syria or Nigeria. Subjected to brutal sexual attacks from different men daily, she still speaks. Probably that’s the resilience of a woman.

Sexual violence on women has always been a favourite tool of torture by the victors since time immemorial. Be it the plundering Huns or the Mughals in India or even the educated erudite British force on women freedom fighters, we have always been subjected to savagery in times of war. But its unthinkable and beyond our imagination that in the 21^st century women in certain nations ravaged by civil wars can still be subjected to inhuman torture, sold at markets in the open, kidnapped, raped, forced to bear kids at a tender age of 11-12, subjected to sexual slavery and passed on from one man to the other.

Last week, Nigeria marked the first anniversary since more than 200 girls were abducted from a secondary school in Chibok by Boko Haram militants. Nigeria's new president, Muhammadu Buhari, now says he doesn’t know if they would ever be found. Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau claimed responsibility for the kidnap of the girls. A report has found that the terror group has kidnapped at least 2,000 women and girls since 2014 and they have pledged to impregnate these girls fresh into their teens so that as many as children they bear, they can herd them into believing the ideology of an Islamic State. That’s how the world will be taken over by their ideology!

 

Hats off to their ideologies. Wonder if they were born from the womb of a woman! Only last week a BBC documentary aired real life tales of young girls herded into a small hut. Most of them were pregnant, many falling victim to the HIV virus as their rapists infected them. They looked like those pregnant cows tethered to posts in village meadows. At least the cows are fed and taken care of by their owners, these girls don’t even get two square meals. They look tired, defeated, lost. Yes, lost in the game of life even before it had started to flower.

The plight of these young African girls are similar to the Yazidi girls held by their ISIS captors in a secret prison in Mosul, Iraq. As Mayat went on to describe the three “rooms of horror” in the house, where she and her fellow victims are taken several times a day and raped, I asked myself : ‘Do we still live in pre-historic times?’ I would have better born an animal than a woman in such parts of the world.

Mayat was first forced to call her parents, who had somehow made it to safety in Kurdistan. She said her captors made her place the call “to hurt us even more. They told us to describe in detail to our parents what they are doing. Part of me would like to die immediately, to sink beneath the ground and stay there. But another part that still hopes to be saved, and to be able to hug my parents once more.”

“They treat us like slaves. We are always ‘given’ to different men…they threaten us and beat us if we try to resist. Often I wish they would beat me so hard I will die. But they are cowards even in this. None of them have the courage to end our suffering.”

A few women and girls have managed to escape, reporting that those who agree to convert to Islam are being sold to Islamic State fighters for as little as $25. Those that do not face never-ending rape, are subjected to beatings and death. Some of the young girls are so traumatized that they have stopped speaking, while others have tried to commit suicide.

Yet, the fight for territory continues, remains of old civilisations razed to the grounds, destroyed by the terrorists, but who hears the cries of those young captive girls behind prisons and closed doors who are dying day in and day out? Will the Western World do anything for them, or will it only react if their own women are assaulted ever?

ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD PRIYADARSHINI'S TRIBUTE TO HER 'MANLY MOTHER' ON MOTHER'S DAY

(AWE-INSPIRING LETTER OF A YOUNG GIRL WHOSE DAD IS HER MOM)

A SHORT ESSAY ON MY MANLY MOTHER ON MOTHER'S DAY

Hi, I am Priyadarshini Dasgupta, 11.11 years old, studying in class 7, section A, Roll No 28, at DPS Newtown, Kolkata. Today, I have been given the opportunity to write about my DAMS who's my Mother too.
My Mother's a Manly Person who has a strange relationship with his alarm clock which never ceases to croak at 5 am round the year. My Manly Mother has a very FLAT HAIRY CHEST unlike other Mothers' & to make it flatter, he unnecessarily goes to the Gym to waste an hour there & is quite appreciated by some people there who do not have flatter chests & whom I don't like hovering around him.
" FAST" is the only word which my Manly Mother uses in the morning once he's back from the gym. " Eat Fast", " Drink your Milk Fast", " Bathe Fast"» Potty Fast" & even makes me Run Fast to catch the school bus., My Manly Mother has learnt to cook only one dish from his Mother, KD, to give me for my lunch box & it's called Sandwiches, hence, my friends tell me that I have a SANDWICH MOM at home.
My Manly Mother talks well but in the mornings & in particular with me, his dialogues are like " TRAGIC B/W MOVIE HEROINE " which are like:-
1. I like to keep it very quiet in the mornings.
2. You are trying my patience.
3. I am not listening.
4. Time out
5. It's time you come out of Ape Mode or else you'll land up in a jungle or zoo for the rest of your life.
6. If you cheat, i'll never play with you.
Like many Adult Women as seen in the Television Series & Movies, my Manly Mother also has a list of Boyfriends & they occupy a special place in his heart. They are :- 1. Mr Davidoff 2. Mr Ken Follett 3. Mr Eric Clapton & in particular one Mr Bose whose Headphones stand in my way whenever I wish to tell my Manly Mother something about his Grumbling Mother, KD, which he doesn't wish to hear. My Manly Mother is very GOOD IN BED &. He doesn't need an occasion to SLEEP. It's called POWER NAP & most of my demands are fulfilled when he's in a mood to HUG THE BED & I come in his way.
I love to go out with my Manly Mother & we go out with an Agenda which he calls BUDGET. Everything in my life is BUDGETED FOR including ICE CREAM & CHOCOLATE which I hate at times. My Manly Mother insists that we belong to Lower Threshold of a Special Class called Middle Class, I don't understand the Logic but I don't ask him why.
But, I Love my Manly Mother as deep down he's very quiet, lonely & sad. I feel for him because he has to give me all his spare time & buy me good things & that's why he doesn't have time nor Money to go out with any GIRLFRIEND. I am saving from my pocket money to GIVE HIM A LOAN FOR A COFFEE DATE IF HE FINDS A GIRLFRIEND.
I feel so proud when my Manly Mother stands out amongst all other Mothers' during PTM as he doesn't need to impress anyone or ask for attention. My teachers are very impressed with him & some show extra attention which makes me jealous.
The best part about my Manly Mother which I really really love is he still Adores my ACTUAL MOTHER " SUD"& never stops to say good about her to me. THAT'S. WHAT MAKES HIM A VERY SPECIAL MUM.
I shall end writing now as I seem to have crossed my word limit of 1000 words for this short essay but I would like to thank all the elders who have voted in favour of me to write this essay about my DAMS & allow to be posted on FB & I have two more requests. 1. Please vote again for me to write about DAMS on Father's Day &
2. Kindly let DAMS know about the spelling & punctuation errors in this essay so that I take a note of it.
Thank you
Your loving
Priyadarshini ( Mithi)

TAGORE’S WOMEN: BEYOND KADAMBARI, MRINALINI, CHARULATA, BIMALA…

(OUR OBSESSION WITH TAGORE’S PERSONAL LIFE ROBS US OF HIS LESSER KNOWN FEMALE CHARACTERS)

Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay had been my all-time favourite feminist author in school and college. His depiction of the resilience and victory of a woman in the face of a society that tries every time and by every means to dominate and annihilate her, be it Annada didi, Abhaya or Rajlakshmi and many more, had always given me confidence and encouragement. But this was till I came upon Sadharon Meye, by Rabindranath Tagore, where he challenges Sarat Babu mockingly to actually elevate an ordinary Bengali girl to the utopic arena and standards of Sarat Chandra’s women. Along with Tagore I too realised Sarat Babu’s women were mostly heroines, Tagore’s women on the contrary were the real life ones, defeated, battered, failed; Instances where they couldn’t stand up against the social customs and at times those who did, turn victims of the social diktats or succumb to the pressures of a family that had no respect for their women.  

  Probably it was easier for Rabindranath to depict the pain, travails and failed wishes of a woman in its true light because he himself was a father who had to bow down to the social customs like dowry when marrying off his daughters, even shedding tears when the daughter has a failed marriage and is tortured by her husband and in-laws. Yes, he too at a point was a helpless father, and though he had to accept the social customs and follow them when marrying off his daughters, he never spared his pen from protesting against them. For him it seemed life and literature went hand in hand.

Our obsession with Tagore’s relationship with numerous women who came his way however stops us from exploring all the Sadharon Meye (ordinary women) of his short stories and novels. We love to stick to a few, those that were made into films and dissect his life as if it was our own. I have stumbled upon at least a dozen of his female characters who even through their deaths have mocked the society that had always and even today push their women out of the mainstream and force them to die. Literally they kill them.

Kusum, the young widow of Ghater Katha (The Autobiography of a Bathing Ghat) is ridiculed by neighbours and relatives as she meets a sanyasi (hermit) regularly who had come to stay in her village. As we know ‘people talk.’ So did Kusum’s society. They stamped upon her the tag of a fallen widow as she met an unknown man, be he a hermit, even in the late hours of night. But little did that society know that the hermit was in reality Kusum’s husband who had left the family after marriage and Kusum was termed a widow as the husband was nowhere to be found and hence assumed dead. Kusum reminds me of Annada didi who had fled with her own husband, even though the society thought she fled with a snake charmer. But Tagore’s Kusum serves. She serves the hermit daily as she would have done to her husband, and when the society pushes her with ridicule to the brink of her existence, she commits suicide, she doesn’t run away with the hermit, she sacrifices. Yet, she is not a coward, she mocks the society that didn’t understand and failed to recognise the love between a man and a woman, between a so-called widow and a hermit, who in reality is the husband. Kusum was battered twice, once when her husband after marriage leaves her to embrace the life of a hermit (not her fault that she was abandoned) and next when the society makes her leave her husband who returns to her.

While Nirupama of Dena Paona (give and take) reminds me of Tagore himself, where the father is barred from meeting his daughter, let alone take her home, because he had failed to pay the dowry to the in-laws who happened to be rich zamindars. And when the father sells off his house and deprives his family just to pay off the dowry and save his daughter from further agony at the in-laws place, it is Nirupama who stands up against her father’s wishes and forces him to go back home with the money. Nirupama knew if her in-laws got to know that she did not allow her father to pay off her dowry, she will be further tortured, yet she stood ground. That was her silent protest. “Ami ki kebol ekta taka r tholi, tomar meyer ki kono maryada nei” (Am I just a bagful of money? Don’t I have any respect), she asks her father. Yet when she dies due to a long fever, and complete negligence on part of the in-laws (they didn’t even call the doctor), the zamindar performs Nirupama’s last rites with great pomp and show. A woman who was given no love or respect when she was alive, and who through her silent death met an end was garlanded on her pyre. And the in-laws promptly found another wife for their son with an assurance of a bigger dowry. Again through death Nirupama ridicules this society and Tagore’s pen becomes mightier than a sword.

And those famous words from Jibito O Mrito “Kadambini moriya  proman korilo je shey morey nai’ (where Kadambini had to prove that she was not a ghost by literally drowning herself and finally dying). Tagore’s lines stating Kadambini had neither any place in this world, or in the other world, she is trapped between the two worlds and has nowhere to go. Isn’t that a challenge that we all women face? We belong nowhere. We tend to lose our identity struggling to perform the role of a doting mother, a responsible daughter, a perfect bride or an ever-smiling docile daughter-in-law and of course the sexy girlfriend. Just like Kadambini, we too are trapped in a net laid by the society’s expectations from a woman. Yet the woman is the second class citizen, she has to suffer, else she has to die to prove she was alive once. Tagore’s women bring out that desperation, their agony, distress, sufferings. And where the humans fail to understand the women, animals at least show friendships, like in Subha, the protagonist  is a deaf and mute girl. She is married off and when the husband realises she cannot speak, he marries again. Subha is left nowhere. While in her village she could communicate with her animal friends who seemed to understand her, played with her, gave her solace. But once taken away from her animal friends into the ‘man’s world’, she is trapped.

Or Dakshayani of Taraprasanner Kirti is loved by her husband and she adores her husband and is proud that he is learned though he earns nothing. But even a woman who is proud of a poor yet learned husband feels guilty when she keeps on producing daughters instead of sons. Many modern women married to rich households still can be compared to Dakshayani. I have heard of designer babies where the sex of the child is altered, I have witnessed women going through repeated pregnancies for a son despite knowing her health can be at stake, I know of a woman who even asked me why I am not going for another child as ‘Ek ladka se kya hotha hai? Aur ek do ladka nahin hone se kya faida!” (One son means nothing, you  should try and produce atleast two more sons) Wish she could say produce a daughter.

Yes we are all trapped just like Tagore’s women were and even after more than a hundred years after he created his women, they are still relevant, and we shall probably find a Nirupama, a Dakshayani, a Kadambini amongst us. The exploitation of a woman is timeless, ageless and knows no boundary. She can rise up against the atrocities like Sarat Chandra’s heroines, and many do so, but how many?          

THE NINE YARD WONDER: #100SAREEPACT

(Why I needed to be motivated to wear a saree)

Dancing to the tune of Megher koley rod heshchhe (Tagore’s song on autumn) in Class KG and that too in front of an audience in school is one of the earliest childhood memories that still sparks vivid. But what was more was the memory of wearing my mom’s red sari that she had meticulously pinned so as to retain its form and shape till the programme ended. And not even for a minute I felt uncomfortable in the first sari of my life. Then what went wrong, that almost for decades I never ever wanted to touch a sari, buy one or even wore one to wedding ceremonies?

Remember the Saraswati Puja at the tutorial during my teens. I stood apart in a skirt. Was it because I felt I would stand out from the rest with all the boys staring at my long legs that would otherwise have been draped in some red and yellow sari? Don’t know why I deviated from the usual tradition of wearing a sari on Saraswati Puja! But surely I remember how all the boys of the tutorial including the one who would be my future husband, had almost made a beeline for me leaving aside many of those who were looking really pretty and somewhat clumsy in saris. The pride of a teenage girl being followed by all the boys as we sang one song after another at the Antakshari meet. Was that enough to make me wear western outfits all my life?

Till 40, I hardly remember owning a sari, though I had bought many for my mother who has always refused to wear anything but a sari and undoubtedly I have always looked up to her in her elegant and graceful sari clad look. She has trekked mountains, gone on hikes, travelled the length and breadth of the country, run a school of toddlers, all done efficiently in a sari. For me it’s a Herculean task. When I gifted her salwar suit pieces or even wrap around skirts, she made it very clear she felt uncomfortable in them. I always felt shocked at her dismissals!

Yet, absolutely nothing, even my mother’s sari clad graceful image, could ever inspire me to wear a sari. Compliments from friends that I have a great height and would carry a sari the best, or even male friends gifting me saris as they travelled across various states or countries like Bangladesh, could not inspire me to wear one. I always did find an excuse for not wearing one. The obsession for not wearing it had become such a compulsion that I even refused to wear one on my wedding day. And bundled off my registry marriage in a salwar suit. Only had to wear a sari for the reception and felt immensely uncomfortable and irritated.

But after years of neglecting the most elegant and sexy attire of the world, I have become completely hooked to it off late. And indeed I now realise why two working women of India had to start a #100sareepact that almost turned into a movement. When nothing, absolutely no compliments or inspirations or gifts or even rebuke could make me wear those yards of fabric, this movement has indeed taken me off guard and I have somehow got into the pact of wearing atleast two saris a week, even at times hiring them from friends, buying my own or lifting them from my mom’s wardrobe. 

But for all these years why didn’t I wear one? And why many working women like me do not wear saris? Is it because sari in India relates to some traditional patriarchy? We relate married women to saris and ghunghats for years, and wrapping oneself in saris so that the male members of the sasurbari will not be able to see any part of the body. I however, never believed in this psyche. For me sari was always the sexiest attire. It can be worn in the most sensuous way possible revealing and well not revealing any and every part one wishes to. Then may be as my husband had put in once I never wished to look sensuous?

Many friends said since wearing sari is often a compulsion, not wearing one is seen as an indication of a woman being allowed to make personal choices. This also applies to symbols of marriage, like sindoor and mangalsutra. One friend in particular said she wore jeans when her in laws were away and switched to sari when they were around, just to show them respect! And undoubtedly I still hear many often criticize me as the ‘liberated, modern, westernised’ woman for wearing western wear even to ceremonies. 

But for me it was always a question of comfort and economy. I found skirts and tops, jeans and tops anytime more economical than buying a sari and all the accessories they need. Not to say the dearth of good tailors to make blouses, and the laziness of a working mother who had no time to hunt for matching blouses or run across potholed streets while on work in a sari.

Yet, I must say today I realise I have no excuse whatsoever to make a sari work on me. And needless to say I have truly discovered how a sari makes me the woman that I am.

TRACTOR GIRL MAKES INROADS INTO KHAPLAND

(A real life rural parallel to NH10’s Meera)

As the Satabdi Express chugged into Chandigarh station, what caught my eyes was the tremendously clean and neat platform, less crowded, well managed, passengers and porters following rules strictly instead of shoving and pushing people around and an utterly urban business-like aura. For a first-time tourist who is increasingly used to the mayhem of an over-crowded Howrah station, Chandigarh surely was a pleasant surprise. As the exceedingly handsome Himachali chauffeur sent by Oberoi, led our way to the black sedan waiting to take us up the hills, my husband turned to my son and declared we shall be travelling through Khapland.

I found no sign of the Khapland terrain I was used to viewing and no hint of travelling down NH10, though my son proudly replied back to his dad: “Oh so its here that NH10 was shot!” And then turning to me added: “Mom, Virat Kohli’s girlfiend was the lead actress.” As if I didn’t know! But I chose to remain silent, smiling away like an innocent bride who has just stepped into the outside world, getting to know so many new things from the men who would be escorting her to the hills.

Well, what I did realise is that we would be driving through a major part of Haryana, a state that has a dubious reputation for its skewed sex ratio. But when the trip down the semi-barren roads of Khapland throws up news of a bold woman who dared to infiltrate the male world of mechanised farming, then surely one gets a real-life parallel to Meera and her NH10.

The four lane mountainous highway reminded me of Hollywood movies, though I knew the little glades dotting them often came up with horrors of honour killing or forced female foeticides. Every now and then as we passed through small villages and towns my son kept on pointing at women: “Dad, there are many girls around,” though his dad was more interested in the Kinnauri girls up in the hills than their Haryanvi counterparts. Probably NH10 had such an impact on my son, he felt he would see a land totally devoid of women! I had to explain what a lopsided sex ratio meant and that there were enough women still left in Haryana to roam the streets though most of them were veiled in ghunghats that almost came down till their bosoms.

And then when we thought we would just see veiled women all our way, we came across Suman Rani, the Tractor Girl from Hisar. She is an inspiration for sure, may be not like the urban Meera who had the intelligence and background to avenge the lords of the Khapland, but a rural educated mother of two who in her own small way made inroads into the hediously patriarchal society of Haryana.

Clad in a salwar kameez (and without a ghunghat for sure), this 27-year-old woman showed the courage to be the first woman in the region to have applied for a tractor driving license. And that’s how she decided to make inroads into the male domain where, women driving to grain markets or participating in mechanised farming is a taboo and never encouraged. 

However, just like the widows of Bengal had Vidyasagar and Rammohan Ray to help them, Suman has her husband Anil, her greatest confidante and friend who respected his wife’s wishes and helped her to gain a status that’s usually swept under the carpet when a girl is born in Khapland. Though the in-laws were not supportive, they did not oppose either.

Suman plans to take her kids to school, help her husband on the farms, drive to the grain markets and also ferry other women to the markets of they need to. That’s how her tractor will help her. She wants to set a trend so that other young women of the area would also be inspired to try out their hands in jobs that were so long considered to be out-of-bounds for them. It also means financial freedom, as Suman plans her husband to take up some other job and not spend more time in the fields, she would take care of that and her husband can thus earn the extra penny to help their children get a good eductaion.

As I watched the Tractor Girl, I somehow remembered what the police officer told Meera in NH10: “Gurgaon mein jab aakhri mall khatam hote hain, wahin aap ki democracy aur constitution khatam hoti hai” (Where the urban malls end in Gurgaon, democracy and constitution also end there, what starts next is the rule of Khapland). And as I said goodbye to Khapland and meandered up into the picturesque Solan Valley, I realised there is a woman who has proved the officer from NH10 wrong and may be will bring in a new era to Khapland.