Friday, July 8, 2011

Victory!


This is Nirmala, one of the artisans that works with Rangsutra (and one of her daughters, who officially wins the My Favorite Indian Child award). She's kind of a group leader, but kind of not at the same time. I hung out at her house for an afternoon when I was in Arjunpur, and we watched the wedding DVD of a girl who I didn't even realize was in the room because she looked SO different (meaning younger, meaning not even 18, but I'm really bad at judging the ages of Indian people) with all the makeup and jewelry and her sari on. Nirmala's husband was lurking around in the background, but I never really interacted with him. Dipti's told me that he is pretty awful and abusive to her, but he lives in Mumbai for most of the year, painting houses. Unfortunately even when he's there in Mumbai and Nirmala does something like leave their home, their neighbors will call him and tell him. Anyway, he had been back in the village for 4 months, and when he bought his return ticket to Mumbai he bought one for her too, and was going to make her live in a slum there with him. So she asked Rangsutra for work, any kind of work, so that she would have a valid (economic) reason to stay in the village. We gave her work, and he went back to Mumbai on the 5th without her. Minus points against distressed migration and abusive husbands.

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