हमारी छोरिया छोरो से कम है क्या ?

I have recently read a book called Young and restless by Gurmehar Kaur. It is about the young Politicians of India. I will not be talking about the book but something she wrote in it that caught my eye. She was giving a little context about what she experienced with relation to caste while writing about Jignesh Mevani under the subheading 'Youth and Caste’. This is what she wrote-

'Caste...' my teacher explained in the worst way one could, ‘is a social structure based on the jobs you did. If you did honourable jobs like being a priest or being a general in king's army or you owned land, you would be of high caste; if you did jobs like making tools and clay pots you would be medium caste; and if you did dirty work like clean other people's homes and work with dead animals, then you were of the lower caste.'

She said after being taught that the girls started asking each other about their caste and if someone else's caste was lower than theirs, they started treating them differently obviously as thought they were inferior to them. Anyone who is different from you be it the caste in India or race in America, there is discrimination against them. If we feel superior to someone else, we tend to oppress them. In today's world there is discrimination based on skin colour, religion, caste, race, gender, disabilities and many more.In this blog I will be writing about a Netflix series I watched. 

I am a girl but I come from a very privileged family where I am not stopped from doing anything and have no family pressure but this series depicts what the majority of the women and girls go through in India and one way in which we can change that. So, the series I watched is called Daughters of Destiny. It was an extremely eye-opening documentary and you already know how much I love documentaries and if you don't, well I love them. 

Daughters of destiny is a story about 5 girls from Shanti ashram. Let me first tell you a little bit about Shanti ashram. Shanti ashram is the residential school for children whose parents earn less than $2 per day or all the so-called untouchables or Dalits. It is located a few kilometres away from Bangalore. This institution was founded by Dr. Abraham George who sold his company and then wanted to do something for the underprivileged in India, so Shanti ashram was born. It follows the ICSE and ISC curriculum (you know all about it and if you don't checkout this blog). Every year it only takes about 12 girls and 12 boys from the three states around and they take only one child per family and a lot of people this rule but it is done as the belief that one child can uplift their family and if their two children from one family then it will be at the cost of another family. 

The children enter Shanti ashram at the age of four and only leave after they are done with their 12th and are allowed to go home only twice a year during the summer and winter vacation. This is done so that the students do not have any waver in concentration due to the problems at home or societal pressures. In Shanti Ashram they are provided with excellent facilities, nutritious food, extracurricular activities, and amazing education. The girls in the series more than often say that when they go home, they feel guilty about the fact that they get to live a much-privileged life in comparison to their families. But this never discourages them, and it is because of the situation of their families that they have big dreams so that they can uplift them, village and caste.

They all communicated brilliantly in English and were translating what their parents or siblings were saying too. At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes that a 5-year-old girl whose parents make matchboxes for a living, speaking in English with so much charm and confidence that is when I realised that we underestimated them. We associated poverty with them not knowing English. I had trouble believing it and I feel guilty about it. Never judge people on how they look or where they come from. Shanti Bhavan keeping the children there for the majority of the year helped them to better their skills in English as they were in an environment where everyone around them was speaking English and I actually relate to that as that is how I improved my English too by communicating with others. One of the girls wanted to study Human resources and when she asked her family about what they think about it they said they don’t have any problem. They said study hard and do so that you make your whole family proud. That seems normal for all of us. All of us have the freedom to choose our dreams and aspirations. Unfortunately, in India most of the girls drop out of school after 10th and get married. But her parents wanted her to achieve something for herself. Very similar to the movie Dangal where Aamir khan's character says-

‘मैं अपनी छोरियों को इतना काबिल बनना चाहता हूँ कि लड़के उन्हें नहीं हुआ लड़कों को देखने जाए'  

which means ‘I want to make my girls so capable that boys don’t come to see them for marriage, but they go to see the boys.' In this case it is the capability of earning for themselves in an HR job.

This according to me is a story about dreaming and achieving these dreams. It is hard enough for us to achieve those dreams but imagine doing it with almost no financial support and so many family problems, people around you constantly asking you to leave what you are doing and doing something that no one in your family has done. The pressure and fear are immense but here the bravery and dedication beat them. Not only girls or the underprivileged people but anyone who does something different has a lot of problems but if we would be afraid of ‘different’ it would be very hard to keep progressing. So don't be afraid to be unique. People might question you at first even look at you as though you are an alien but later you will be the one to start a new trend with people asking you for advice and you will look back prouder than before. These girls did something different from their society, they studied and are now doing jobs in IT companies, corporates, hospitals and many more, they were doing this rather than working in a farm or doing household work. Their parents sent them there hoping that their lives will be different from theirs. Which came true and I am sure looking at them others will realize the importance of it and start taking it up too. So, the aim of Shanti ashram is achieved as they have lifted their family, caste and village which will eventually help us to progress as a country. 

Let me leave you with this.