Rani Bai

Going to Malaaria, the village, for the second time today everyone's moods were either testy or filled with suppressed frustration. It was an important day, we were going to the village again to not only sit in on the Women's Resource Center meeting but also to talk to female Jati Panchiat members, something that is integral and critical to the making of our documentary. How did they get involved, how were the percieved as they began their work in this traditional and male dominated system, what did they face and what changes do they want to see? these are the questions we wanted answered and the reason why we were venturing out again to meet with them.

of course, the most important days are the days when things never go smoothly and little things end up becoming unexpected obstacles. we were all running late because of all days today we were having trouble finding a rickshaw to get to seva mandir on time to catch the jeep that would take us to the vilalge. we got to seva mandir to find out that the interpreter that was coming with us was not there yet and the car that we were supposed to take was not ready. when we finally did get the car we realized that not everyone would fit in the car so one person had to stay behind.

we followed the same windy and dusty road to the village to go into that same room where the last meeting was held. Greeted with Pushpa ji (who is one of the head members of the Women's Resource Center and has worked with Seva Mandir for a while now to provide women in the village with health and education training) and we were introduced to Rani Bai, one of the female jati panchiat members and also an extremely experienced member of the community. dressed in a red and yellow colorful sari, with beautiful traditional bangles on her arms, hands and her ankles, she sat there a little shy in front of the camera. Then there was confusion about the translation part. Rani Bai would speak in Mewari, Pushpa ji would translate in Hindi and then Tanvika and I would translate that into English. A fairly long process.

Rani Bai spoke to us for a while telling us about different cases, her experiences, and her life. I was already in a testy mood from the morning and the lack of preparation from our part, our audio was screwed up so we could not hear the important things that Rani Bai had told us about her initial involvement and the camera was not charged so we ran out of film and did not capture the last part of her talking about specific cases. Trying to use alternate ways of video would be not only inconsistent with the rest of the footage but nothing could be heard from the ladies that were speaking. Everyone seemed lost and opinions kept on flying around in terms of what we should do. From little things of how long should Rani Bai speak before her speech was translated to trying to decide if we want to make them repeat everything they had said or just move on to the next interview and just make do with what we have, everything seemed to be up in the air. Perhaps it was this frustration, of knowing that some of these women had come from other villages, had traveled and walked miles to come see us and share their stories that made me speak the best hindi that i had ever spoken. through my broken vocab and broken sentence structure i was able to convey my sentiments and concers to Rani Bai and Pushpa ji about what was happening and what we needed to next.

We decided to just screw the tape and filming situation and just go on with the interviews, handwriting down everything that they were saying. It was extremely important for me that everyone get a chance to speak, because we could have just packed up our bags and had come back another day, but these women had walked miles just to come see us. I could feel the frustration of the other group members on our side feeling useless as they just sat there in the heat for 2 hours, 3 hours, not understanding any of the jibberish that was being said, be it Mewari and Hindi, and I could also sense the importance of going on and letting the ladies speak for as long as they want to, so that they feel that their work and their voices are being heard by us.

Rani Bai and another woman, Udi Bai had an amazing air to them. Here we are college kids doing a project in the summer in some far off country with our idealistic wishes and desires for "change". But these women, with their ages, have been fighting and have held on to their self righteous ideas of justice for years on end, organizing amongst themselves and forcing themeslves into systems to ensure that their concerns be heard. I was wholeheartedly inspired by their presence.

At the conclusion of this, we made time for the women that were in the room to also feel like they know us. the other team members on our side took turns stating their name and conveying their sentiments of how frustrating it is not be able to talk to them directly, how happy they are to be here working with them and making this film, and how beautiful and strong each of them were. the funny thing about being the middle person between these two groups is to see the irony in how the sentiments are completley reciprocated mutually, neither group seeing, or hearing rather that they are essentially saying the same things but just in differnet tongues. both groups wished to talk to each other directly but found it so difficult to do so. I would look directly into Rani Bai and Udi Bai's eyes, in awe of how much even the lines on their faces told about the hardships that they have encountered and the things that they have seen, and really listen to them. But then I would have to turn to Pushpa ji, because even though I feel like there is such a connectiong between them and us in the room, I have no idea what had come out of her mouth.

We told them how we felt that this kind of stuff, in villages, women and community members working together is something that we read about in books. to see these real faces and to hear their voices is incredible. and what did they say in return? they said that THEY had heard about these other countries, America for instance, in books and these places and the people living in these places only resided in their imagination, and for them seeing us be so interested in their work was inspiring.

The day had started off with a lot of obstacles and not with the most positive zeal. However the power and inspiration that emanated from that little room in that little tiny village of Malaaria between these women and us was completely worth feeling over losing the footage or not having everythign captured on tape.

As strange as this may sound, these local heroes to me are no less than other notable and worthy figures in history that have voiced and worked for their passion and dedicated their lives to their determination, like harriet tubman, like maya angelou, like mother teresa. i felt as though interviweing these women and being in their presence to hear their stories about how much crap they had to hear from society to organize together to form a more just community in their village is no less of a feat. Half jokingly Pushpa ji mentioned about the respect and authority that Rani Bai had made for herself. She said that if Rani Bai sitting in this room says something, then the person crossing the street would stop to listen to what she had to say.


We have a lot of work to do now. We have to look all of the stuff that we did get on tape and translate and have it typed out which might take hours. we also have to figure out what to do with all the notes of just hearing the stuff we heard from them and incorporating that into the video.

We will meet them again on June 7th for a Jati Panchiat meeting. We had stuffed ourselves back into the car, staggering ourselves to make room for everyone, and Rani Bai was still outside our window saying Namaaste, Dhannivad, and bye to all of us.

involving myself in this, of course i think about how i want to work in Bangladesh and this is exactly the kind of thing that I want to be a part of. And I keep on thinking of how AASHA can be a part of this.
I'll be plotting :)