SAY NO!

By: Karuna Dayal

This Blog is part of the Men Say No Blogathon, encouraging men to take up action against the violence faced by women.
More entries to the Blogathon can be read at www.mustbol.in/blogathon. Join further conversation on facebook.com/delhiyouth & twitter.com/mustbol

I walk alone each day -
even when you’re by my side.

Fighting this
Not once…not twice,
But, over and over again, while they look at me with those eyes….

Teasing, tearing, ripping, raping eyes…..
and I turn to you, to see some respite.
But sadly it’s a dream,
you’re not with me.

I walk alone amidst the crowd, in the lanes of life
Brushed against, jostled and grabbed, its not a fleeting moment but everyday strife

I SAY NO…..

With rage I scream to let the scavengers know
that we are more than one to SAY NO!
Fighting tears of fears, veils of shame
With a steely will and a steadfast frame


WHAT MAKES ME THINK……

Is this storm within,
Every time I face it! I shake it!
to wake up again,
to take a stand ALONE.

Still hoping that someday you will come this way…..
Embolden my action, not let me be an easy prey
Standing together to SAY NO!

Days pass and I wait to see there is some change
You come together with me to fight back and SAY NO!
To see the scavengers go!


Picture Courtesy: Spirits_of_December_by_KatjaFaith

The NGO Diary: All for love! (part two)

The process of investigating about a trafficked victim's location in a red light area becomes a smooth task if you're well connected with the local police and have some other handy contacts who work in the brothel area. The procedure became much easier since we had a well known lady police officer to help us raid into the correct brothel.

All this while, the mother of the missing young girl was crying continuously. It was really moving for me to understand that simple gestures such as holding a mothers' hand, wiping off their tears and assuring them that their daughter will be found would strengthen the bond between us and make her feel somewhat relieved.

In the next one hour we managed our way inside a brothel in the local red light area. It was difficult to recognise the girl amongst the many heavily painted young faces all set for the evening. After some heated and aggressive conversations bent down upon the brothel madams, ofcourse with the support of the police led to the release of the girl.

Finally, she came out with one of the madams who was time and again whispering something into her ears. Probably something nasty! which she ignored in the happiness to feel the freedom outside the four dark walls. Her family and the young man were happy too to see her.

Picture Courtesy:"She's Standing All Alone"by ElifKarakoc (Deviantart)

I promised her that we will come back to meet her soon and this time at her native place. Exactly, after one month, I was back in West Bengal to do a follow up of this case and went to meet Chandni and her family. A surprise was in store for me...when I saw the same young man standing close to here a Chadini too was wearing the 'mangal sutra'(A mangalsutra is a piece of jewelry worn by women that symbolizes hindu marriage.) and sporting the bright streak of 'sindoor' (sindoor (vermilion) is traditionally applied at the beginning or completely along the parting-line of a woman’s forehead.) There was sudden rush down my spine to see the young couple together. With a slight suprised expression on face and heart filled with happiness I hugged Chandni. This was the best case follow up I had during my experience......

I am writing this to reaffirm your belief in the fact of life that there is no language, no bondage of time or any other barrier in your act to help someone. All you need to do is to cross those limits you've created in life and go a step ahead to help someone in need. All you need is to have some love for change!

The NGO Diary: All for love! (part one)

Picture Courtesy: "Painted Bindi" by Gaby Barnuevo

Some time back I met a family from West Bengal, they were visiting my organisations' office to seek help in finding their daughter who was trafficked to the red light area in Delhi. The parents were really heart-broken and could barely comprehend a word in hindi just as little I could understand Bengali. Along with this family came two men both hailing from West Bengal, one of whom was a young man willing to help us with the exact address of the brothel and verify the recent picture of the missing girl.

As I investigated into the connection this young man had with the girl, it seemed like a Bollywood movie in front of my eyes. The young man had been visiting this girl in the brothel for sometime and took a picture of her on his mobile one day. Later, he went back to Bengal to the girl's village to meet her parents and initiated to find there daughter. It was definitely love an endless love between the two that made him come back to help her.

The NGO Diary -Memories of Nagaland!

Picture Courtesy: Karuna

I was in Nagaland in 2010 with my colleagues Keya and Sanjai ji from HRLN. It was one of the best trips I've made through my work travels towards the North East of India. Nagaland is a state in the far north-eastern part of India. It borders the state of Assam to the west, Arunachal Pradesh and part of Assam to the north, Myanmar to the east and Manipur to the south. The state capital is Kohima, and the largest city is Dimapur.




After successfully conducting our training on the first day we headed off to see the local market in Dimapur. To my surprise it had everything on sale on this earth. :)

Right from a baby owl to silk worms, dog puppies, fish, prawns, pork, beef, exotic birds to being more vegan - exotic vegetables to the world famous 'raja' chillies!



Picture Courtesy: Karuna
In the picture: Sanjai Sharma and Keya Advani

My best trip ever and more to come.....

The NGO Diary - "Freedom is not free"

"Freedom is not free"....living in an independent land costs a lot more than this whole life ahead of us. The other day I was reading about a recent murder of a 21 year old Radhika Talwar, The attacker managed to escape in the crowd, police said.

The motive behind the killing is yet to be ascertained, though police suspect it to be a case of a love-affair gone wrong.

Freedom is definitely not free with the recent spate of rape cases, murders, assaults, stalking, harassing and you name it all that is cornering women and girls in Delhi and across India. A 9 year old girl was raped this week by a daily wage earner. In another incident a five-year-old girl was raped, beaten up and dumped in a shrubby area in southwest Delhi.

The rapists usually go scot free. Some men are definitely not to be left open on Delhi streets it seems! Be it a illiterate labourer, a goverment 'officer' (sarkari babu) travelling in your bus/metro/train (who is always found staring at young women and girls and starts to scratch his groin incidently!!!), your bus driver, bus conductor etc.... The crime capital is raising its voices BUT with no supportive rape law no other supportive tools of law! So when will we get the freedom from this injustice.

Picture Courtesy:deviantart

Where is the freedom?? Could you tell??

The NGO Diary - "A place of sacrifice"

My first NGO official visit took me to the second oldest city of India - 'Allahabad'. As per the wikipedia Allahabad is one of the fastest growing cities of India. It is located in North of India in the state of Uttar Pradesh. It is one of the four sites of the mass Hindu pilgrimage Kumbh Mela, the others being Haridwar, Ujjain and Nashik. It has a position of importance in Hindu scriptures for it is situated at Triveni Sangam, the confluence of the holy rivers Ganges and Yamuna, and the ancient Sarasvati River.


Picture Courtesy: deviantart: Supergrass1975

There is more to be shared with you beyond the historical importance of this city. When I was being interviewed for my current NGO job, one of the questions I was asked was 'if I could travel alone in the trains (whichever class, whatever time etc. etc.)'? The very question as a budding social development 'adventurist' gave me a high. I had recently renounced my fresh corporate experience to do what I really liked! and my third day at the NGO took me to Allahabad to organise a workshop on Human Trafficking. To fill you up with the connection between Uttar Pradesh -> Allahabad -> Human Trafficking -> History?

Uttar Pradesh in North India shares the longest international boundary with Nepal, the porous border along this stretch, which has 14 legal entry points and numerous un-manned routes, is an open field for human traffickers. Traffickers often hide victims in the stream of legal migration, following the same roads and travelling on the same trains and buses as legal migrants. Their victims are innocent women and girls who are lured in the name of love and/or opportunities.

Here comes the holy land of 'Varanasi' - you might be wondering why am I freakingly connecting all the anciently beautiful places together. Well, most holy places here hold within dark stories of servitude and exploitation of women.

Varanasi is called 'Benaras' in hindi. It is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, dating back thousands of years and contemporaneous with the Sumer civilisation. The city is also called Kasi, "the luminous" in the Rigveda.It is often also referred to as "city of temples and learning."

In the picture: Gita Devi, a 77-year-old widow from Kathmandu, was wed in an arranged marriage at age 5; her husband died one month later.

Like most traditional Hindus of her generation, she never remarried.

Young widows are still being brought in by sex traffickers and sold into prostitution. The "sevadasi" system, in which the 'service' done to rich and powerful pilgrims is seen as an act of piety, is still prevalent. Sexual exploitation still exists at the bhajanashrams.

In September 2001, a high-level meeting of the National Human Rights Commission, representatives of the Department of Women and Child Development, Human Resource Development Ministry, and Governments of Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal was held. At this meeting, Justice JS Verma said:

It is unfortunate that nothing substantial seems to have happened to elevate the status of women who hence come to Vrindavan despite the philanthropic attitude of the people in the country to help others. The need of the hour is to take concrete steps to stop the flow of women to Vrindavan and simultaneously carry out rehabilitation programmes whereby the overall plight of these women can be improved.

The NHRC, it was decided, would be the facilitating agency that would take these concrete steps, coordinating efforts of the government and NGOs. Justice Sujata V Manohar, NHRC member who visited Vrindavan to study the plight of widows, stated that facilities such as free and clean accommodation, financial assistance and proper healthcare should be provided to these destitute women. She suggested that a fund be set up for their dignified cremation, distribution of pension, establishment of self-help groups for income-generation, provision of LPG connections for group cooking, ration cards, group housing scheme and suitable security measures.

Whether these "concrete steps" will make any difference at all to the widows of Vrindavan remains to be seen.

An earlier study, commissioned in 1992 by the National Commission for Women and conducted by Deepali Bhanot, corroborates that "the flesh trade flourishes in Vrindavan and Mathura in the full knowledge of the police, administration, holy men and politicians." Amongst the several widows interviewed, Chapla Desi, 27, is quoted as saying,"All men lust after our bodies". [Quoted from http://forums.ratedesi.com/showthread.php?t=232920]

I wish to share more of my experiences in the upcoming posts of 'The NGO Diary'. See you soon :)

The NGO Diary - An Introduction

I've always wanted to write about my experiences till now. I plan to sub head my upcoming posts as 'The NGO Diary'.

To introduce, I work with one of the premier Socio-Legal Organisations in India, having 28 offices across India. We boast to have filed the best Public Interest Litigation on Human Rights across the country's State High Courts and the Supreme Court of India. I am proud to be one of the daring and upfront personnel's from our team.

I joined them 2 and a half years ago and to my mind not a single day has been wasted to ignore and learn from the best of the experiences or on the hand the perspicacity of the NGO world/sector. It has made me even more humble, observant and stronger. There have been various strange, funny, happy, sluggish, 'hard-working', smart, mesmerising group of people. From the first day of my joining the organisation I stepped into knowing a whole new world of a stimulated and empowered team of super courageous individuals. At the same time, my first introduction to a colleague who told me "how political this place was..." left me wonder the next few day to come.

I do understand now, what it takes to work in the Social development sector. Life is not so easy for many as it is for some. The gap between the two and their dedication is truly inspiring!!