girls don't ride bikes

The weather was surprisingly pleasant as we set off by jeep for the village of Gularia. While the floods refused to recede in the rest of the country, in UP, we were still having to brave the heat and dust. Wishing that it would rain would have, however, been a dangerous proposition, I was told. Gularia would get completely cut off from the rest of the world during the rains. The incidents of jeeps toppling over or getting stuck in knee-deep mud were one too many to take the chance of going there in such weather. So I was only too glad that the weather was good and that we were on our way to meet the mother-groups assisted up by Care, India in the village.


Let me tell you a little about Gularia. Among the cluster of villages in the vicinity of Hardoi, Gularia stands apart. It is perhaps the only village where people worry less about where the next meal is going to come from, and how the crop will survive from one season to the next. Gularia is inhabited by families who live a nomadic life. They are in the village for only a month or two in the whole year. During the rest of the year, they are away performing in Bijnor. Yes, this is the famous Nat Community we are talking about, where the mother, wife and daughter-in-law are all in the trade. My intent here is not to discuss their migratory pattern or to critique their lifestyle. All I wish to do here is to place before you what I saw and heard in the matter of a half hour in the newly built one-room primary school in Gularia where I waited until the mother-groups arrived. In retrospect that half hour felt like a crash course on how children are socialized and how they grow into their gender-specific roles.


There were about 40 children in the age-group of 3 to 11 who were sitting huddled in different parts of the hexagonal red-brick construction. There was only one teacher for all these children. Alok Singh Rathore, who had accompanied me from the Care office in Lucknow, decided to talk to the youngest-looking lot. He went up to the blackboard and started drawing some pictures in chalk.


First, he drew what looked like a fish. He asked the children what it was, to which they responded in chorus, “Machhalee”. “What do you do with it?”, he then asked. “Pakaa kar khaatey hain”, they said. “Who catches the fish?” probed Mr. Rathore. “Papalog, bhai log…aadmi pakadat hain”, they said, matter-of-factly. “Auratein nahin pakadteen?” questioned Mr. Rathore. “Nahin” was the prompt response.


Second, he drew a cup, and asked to know what it was. “Gilaass hai” chorused the children. Mr. Rathore seemed satisfied with the answer when a little girl sitting in the front row confidently corrected, “Nahin, cup hai”. “Accha, to ismein kya peetey hain?” asked Mr. Rathore. “Chai, coffee, paani vagaira”, was the answer. “Kaun-kaun peetey hain?” “Sab peetey hain… mummuy papa, bhaiya, bacchey… sab”, replied several of them. Yes, now more and more children were beginning to participate in this rather unsual discussion. I am not sure if this was the nature of the discussion they had with their school teacher on a daily basis. To me, it certainly seemed like a fun way of doing a class on social learning. Getting back to the “cup/glass” story…as the children were discussing what all one can use the cup for, a little boy sitting towards the last row said in a faint voice, “Daaru bhi peetey hain ismein”. Not sure of what he had heard, Mr Rathore told the boy to speak up, and the boy repeated what he had said earlier. “Daaru bhi peetey hain ismein.” None of the other children tried to shut him up. They had probably not acquired the private/public blinkers that most of us seem to put on as we move towards adulthood, of what one should say and about what one should pretend it doesn’t exist.


Third, Mr. Rathore drew a shirt, and asked the children to say what it looked like. Happy to have been able to identify it, they promptly said, “yeh buskatt hai”. Mr. Rathore not having understood that what they were saying was “bush-shirt,” kept asking them to repeat what they were saying. At this point I couldn’t resist intervening and telling Mr. Rathore that they had rightly identified the picture on the board but were pronouncing it incorrectly. Once having understood what they were saying, he suggested they call it “kameez” if they found it difficult to pronounce “bu-sh-sh-irt”. But they happily continued to refer to it as “buskaat” in the subsequent questions that Mr. Rathore asked them… Mr. Rathore wanted to know who all wear shirts, to which the children replied “Aadmi log, ladkey”. “Kyon ladkiyaan kameez nahin pahanti?” asked Mr. Rathore. “Nahin humarey gaanv mein woh bushkatt nahin kurta pahanti hain,” said one girl. The strange thing was, she was herself wearing one of those “buskatts” she said girls didn’t wear in her village. When I pointed it out to her, she smiled sheepishly, and the class fell silent.


Mr. Rathore then drew a cycle on the blackboard. The children kept staring at the board, trying to figure out what it was that Mr. Rathore had drawn. Sure, it wasn’t the best picture one could have made of a cycle but it was alright. It had two wheels and a handle bars. But the children were silent even as Mr. Rathore prodded them to speak. Then one boy sitting in the second row said, “lekin aapki cycle mein to chain nahin hai…” and then another little one said, “haan iskee to chain utaree hui hai”. Ah ha, so that was why they hadn’t been speaking up, not because they hadn’t gauged it was a cycle but because there was something missing in it! A smile spread across Mr. Rathore’s face as he added the missing cycle chain to the picture, and asked, “Accha to bacchon cycle kaun chalaata hai?” “Ladkey, papa log”, they said. There was no doubt in their mind about who rode the bike in their village. “Kyon ladkiyaan nahin chalaateen?” asked Mr. Rathore. “Nahin, humaarey wahaan ladkiyaan nahin chalaa paateen.” When they were asked why girls were not able to ride bikes, one of the boys replied, “woh girr jaatee hain na, iss liyey”.


Finally, Mr. Rathore drew a fat elephant on the blackboard. Even before he had asked the children what it was, they gleefully replied, “yeh to haathi hai”. When they were asked if they had seen one, I thought they would say they’d seen one in the village fair or some place like that. But to my surprise they said, “haan, TV pey dekha hai”. “Us par baithey ho?” asked Mr. Rathore. “Bandar Baithta hai”, said a child. “lekin aap kabhi baithey ho?” asked Mr. Rathore. “Chidiya bhi baithtee hai”, said another. “aap baithey ho ki nahin?” “Haathi bacchon ko lekar jungle mein chalaa jaata hai…” and on and on they rambled, taking the story forward. However much he tried, Mr. Rathore was not able to bring their imagination back to the next picture on the blackboard. Children will be children after all!