This is an adjunct to my ‘Impromptu’ post.<\/p>\n
Two of the three girls that I taught also sang an impromptu song.\u00a0 I didn’t understand a word of it, but one of the girls looked off into the distance as she sang, and the other one’s eyes stayed fixed on the ground.\u00a0 Their voices were not strong – there was no joy in their words, and no smiles.\u00a0 The song finished, they sat down.\u00a0 The Apne Aap project coordinator who was there leaned over and explained that the song the girls sang was about why are boys treated so much better than girls, why do they get schooling and food when girls do not.\u00a0 And then it hit me why these young ladies sang the way they sang:\u00a0 in front of their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins, teachers, and strangers, they made a declaration – that there is no reason why girls are any different than boys.\u00a0 Out of all the things they could have sung about, the message of equality is what they wished to convey.<\/p>\n
This is a message that definitely needs to be voiced.\u00a0 Women appear to be marginalized here for the most part.\u00a0 In my few short days here, men are the predominant force on the street – they are the drivers of all vehicles; I haven’t seen one female driver.\u00a0 I have not seen a female professional anywhere: at the Baghdogra airport or in the hotel where I am at, all men.\u00a0 They are servers, ticket-takers, cleaners, cooks, shopkeeps – all men.\u00a0 Where are the women in this economy?\u00a0 I’ve seen many of them doing backbreaking work\u00a0in\u00a0the fields.<\/p>\n
But back to the girls, aged 12.\u00a0 Their courage to voice their opinion like that makes me speechless.\u00a0 These ladies are my heroes, the ones\u00a0who, hopefully and with some support,\u00a0will eventually make a difference in their lives and possibly the lives of others\u00a0long after I’ve returned to the US.\u00a0 Maybe I just witnessed the performance of a female version of Gandhi.\u00a0 I hope so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is an adjunct to my ‘Impromptu’ post. Two of the three girls that I taught also sang an impromptu song.\u00a0 I didn’t understand a word of it, but one of the girls looked off into the distance as she sang, and the other one’s eyes stayed fixed on the ground.\u00a0 Their voices were not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/80"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}