The ‘Bois Locker Room’ incident from Delhi has shaken and shocked the parents and teachers and garnered considerable media attention in May 2020. The boys from a social media group shared obscene images of fellow underage girl students, passed sexually explicit and offensive comments. There were discussions of raping these girls and threats to ‘kill’ them, etc. We at Population First wanted to know what was prompting the boys to engage in such conversations and how boys perceived this incident. An online survey was conducted with 226 boys of which more than three fourth were active on social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Instagram. 

Here is what we found out. 

Do let us know your views and any proactive steps you have taken to initiate conversations with boys on sex and sexuality. To stop violence against girls, we need to start talking to boys to counter the misogyny that is so widespread in our society.

 OUR OWN OSCAR- BHANU ATHAIYA 

A tribute by Dolly Thakore

Bhanu Athaiya receiving Laadli Lifetime Achievement Award, 2011-12 at NCPA with Dolly Thakore, Ashutosh Gowariker and Dr. A.L.Sharada

THE FIRST THING I DID when I got news of Bhanu Athaiya passing away, was reach out for the book THE ART OF COSTUME DESIGN by BHANU RAJOPADHYE ATHAIYA above my bed.

And on the opening page found her inscription which read: To Dearest Dolly, to all the wonderful memories we have shared on GANDHI and through the years – Bhanu Feb. 23, 2010.

That was the day she had launched her long overdue book  on her career at the Taj Landsend, in Bandra. And I had the honour of launching her book along with Kamini Kaushal with whom Bhanu had worked on her first film project AAS in 1953.

I first met Bhanu at my friend actor Nadira’s home on Pedder Road somewhere in the early Seventies. And my first conversation with her was about Shree 420, and how I imitated Nadira in MUD MUD KE NA DEKH as a little girl. And she told me she had designed all costumes for Raj Kapoor including the dress Nadira sang that song in!

At that time I was cast as Stella in Alyque Padamsee’s play STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE.  And I had the audacity to ask if she would design my costume. She agreed immediately.  I knew we could not afford this great Film Costume Designer. But with great trepidation I landed up at her workshop in a garage in Shanker Mahal. Within seconds she sketched the low- waisted blue dress I wore in the play….and didn’t charge me a paisa!

How then could I have loved anyone more than her!!!

Then came GANDHI… and my first suggestion to Sir Richard –later Lord Attenborough – for a Costume Designer was Bhanu. As Richard himself writes in his foreword “It took me 17 long years to set up Gandhi, my dream film, and just 15 minutes to make up my mind that Bhanu Athaiya was the right person to create the many hundreds of Indian costumes that would be required to bring it to the screen”.

During the filming of Gandhi for almost a year, some of us had permanent residence at the Ashoka Hotel in Delhi. While most of us preened through its corridors boasting about working on the film, Bhanu was seldom seen anywhere. She worked quietly behind the scenes visiting the lanes of Delhi and accessing tailors and cutters for the hundreds of pyjamas and kurtas that would roll out in trucks on the day of the shoot. She once shared her despair at making nothing but pyjamas! But after the Oscar Award she confided what a challenging job it was choosing the right fabric and cutting the pyjamas for people in different regions of India. Each had a specialty of its own. And never once did we hear her make a demand or complain!

In all the years I have known her, her image never changed. Her glamorous head of jet black hair professionally coiffure framed her smile as she glided elegantly in sophisticated chiffon sarees. Her last visit to my home was in August 2014, when I hosted a gathering of some of the cast and crew of Gandhi to remember Sir Richard’s passing away that week. She sat demurely on the diwan…acknowledging those she recognized, and gave me a long lasting hug. This was my Laadli of the Year 2012.

For me one of the most exciting responsibilities as the Coordinator of National Laadli Media  Awards is of suggesting someone for the Laadli Lifetime Achievement Award. Shuffling through all the women achievers I had encountered in my life from the vast canvass of media oriented pursuits one name that jumped out was Bhanu Athaiya. And in the field of film costume designing by any women the choice was easiest. No woman had  designed more costumes for more successful popular films for over 50 years and for the most popular banners and directors and actors than Bhanu Athaiya.

And remembering all those encounters brings a tear to my eye even today. Goodbye Bhanu. There will never be another like you.

Salute to translators all over the world

 

A friend recently wrote a post on Facebook in Marathi after seeing a rainbow in which she used the words 'rangancha fatkara', रंगांचा फटकारा that was translated into English as a 'slap of colours.' Fatkara is a splash, while a slap is fatka फटका. This translation is done by artificial intelligence or AI and it proves the need for good translators. 

The need for translation from one language to another is felt strongly in a country like India, a land where hundreds of languages are spoken/written, if we include the dialects. While some languages may have many common words, for example Marathi and Kannada, or Marathi and Gujarati, some are totally different from each other. More so, the same word may convey something entirely different in two languages. For example, shiksha in Hindi is education, while it's punishment in Marathi. Given this scenario, the ability to know more languages than one's mother tongue is decidedly advantageous. Such people, the translators, who can understand one language and put the meaning across in another, make it possible for a native Marathi speaker /reader like me to enjoy literature in Bengali written by Rabindranath Tagore or Sharat Chandra Chatterjee, in Kannada written by Bhairappa or Vaidehi, in Spanish by Marquez. I will always remain grateful for their hard work; but for them, I would have missed the beauty of Tagore's stories, Sharad Babu's novels, Bhairappa's version of the Mahabharata, and the magical realism of Marquez. 

Translators are in great demand these days mainly from companies working in the field of AI. Once you have fed the computer with the translations of certain words, there is no need of a living person to do the translation for you. The translated versions of various posts and comments that we see on Facebook in languages other than the one we use, are provided automatically, i.e. by AI. Of course, AI works on the basis of words fed to it by living persons, but the database doesn't have a context for the words to be translated. It is done to cut costs and thus very often we come across advertisements or subtitles that are incorrect, hilarious, annoying, and irritating. The message in the advertisements may reach the reader but the words definitely lose their original shine. People who work as translators complain that they are not given their dues, respect, pay, or credits.

The world is a richer place because of translators who quite literally transport the reader of one language and culture to the language of the original writing, the reader gets a feel of the alien culture, food, fashion, cities, housing, etc. She may dream to travel to this land someday.

Although it is said that 'much is lost in translation', whatever remains is also valuable. No doubt, the 'lost in translation' feeling is sometimes prominent while watching the film in a language we don't understand. Sometimes the subtitles don't match the actions on the screen, sometimes the beauty or the literary value of a song is lost in a literal translation. Subtitling has gained momentum as a skill or an art in recent years and that has benefited viewers across the globe. Viewers who love web series, films, documentaries made in different countries and in different languages.

A heartfelt thank you to the translators on this International Translation Day.

We at population first value translators and had awarded an incredible book Romantic Encounters of a Sex Worker written in Tamil by Nalini Jameela and Translated into English by Reshma Bhardwaj.

Mrinmayee Ranade

Communications Consultant

Population First

BREAST IS THE BEST, OR IS IT?

A relook at common wisdom

 

DR SHANTANU ABHYANKAR, WAI

shantanusabhyankar@hotmail.com 

Image Source: Google

Breast milk invigorates and nourishes the newborn like nothing else. It’s the baby’s first food, ensuring good health right into adulthood. Not surprisingly, almost every Bollywood hunk has sworn to the goodness of ‘Ma ka doodh’ on screen.

Successful breast feeding is the rich dividend following investment in the form of prenatal counselling, good preparation, a positive attitude, institutional and government policies and time.

‘Breast is the best’ and we need lactation friendly facilities even in public spaces. But there can be exceptions. The dictum, that all mothers should feed all babies, exclusively for six months, needs to be looked at again. Some special situations need to be factored in.

Such blanket advice overlooks the physical, social and economic constraints of the mother. Ignorance or unwillingness to try hard enough aren’t the only reasons why a mother gives up breastfeeding. Many mothers need to get back to education/earning due to socioeconomic reasons. A six month sabbatical may not be affordable. If the cost of time invested, cost of giving up a job, refusing a promotion or a raise, is factored in, we will realize that breastfeeding isn’t cheap and certainly not free.

Over glorification of breastfeeding can create guilt in the minds of women forced to give it up. Such mothers need positive support without guilt and judgment. Of course it is the mother's duty to feed the newborn but then it is the father's duty as well. It’s the responsibility of the family too. In fact just as not procreating is a personal choice, not breastfeeding can be a valid personal choice and needs to be respected.

Low birth weight and preterm babies can accept only small aliquots of milk. They may not be able to cry aloud and are too weak to latch effectively and suckle vigorously. They need to be fed every hour or two, for the first three to four months. This leads to sleep deprivation and a lot of other physical and psychological challenges. In such situations, milk substitutes under medical supervision, may be given a thought. Insisting on exclusive breastfeeding can be counterproductive. The baby needs to be well fed and well-nourished; the source matters little in the face of such adverse conditions.

Babies larger than expected, especially those born to diabetic mothers, become too hungry, too soon. They may need supplement, till lactation is properly established.

Even normal babies often suffer hunger, for lactation is not well established in the first few days of life. The standard medical response to this is; ‘in the first few days of life, all that is secreted is all that the baby requires’.

However hunger in the early days of life can be life threatening. Emergency NICU admission with intravenous glucose may become necessary. Long term neurological consequences of unrecognized low blood sugar can be disastrous. Hunger leads to excessive crying, lethargy, dehydration, convulsions, very low blood sugar and even sudden death.  

The mother is exhausted after labor and readily breaks into tears when she realizes that she is failing to feed the child. This inferiority complex and accompanying anxiety leads to reduced milk flow. Elderly mothers, comorbidities, cesarean section, a baby girl when a boy was expected; are stressful enough. A wailing toddler due to failed lactation is the last thing one would want. Lactation doesn't happen instantaneously. Suckling happens to be the strongest stimulus but suckling the child every two hours is easier said than done. Delayed onset of lactation is neither the mother’s fault nor the baby’s.

Traditionally such problems have been tackled with wet nurses, cow’s milk etc. Since milk powder is sterile and has known constituents in known proportion that closely match the composition of human milk, it’s preferred over animal milk. Some cities now boast of milk banks, which is a good option too.

Breastfeeding is the obvious choice between sumptuous feeds and milk substitutes. However between reconstituted milk powder and emergency intravenous glucose; milk powder is obviously the better choice. Substitutes create problems because of improper reconstitution and unsafe water. We've made a lot of progress as far as safe drinking water is concerned. A properly constituted and safely prepared powdered milk is a good option. It is important to see that the baby is adequately and safely fed till the time lactation is well established. Once that happens, top feeds should be stopped forthwith.

Policies supporting milk substitute appeasing the market forces and abetting profiteering are bad but milk substitutes aren’t bad by themselves. Milk and milk substitute should be used judiciously according to their wishes needs and abilities off the mother and her family.

Laadli Celebrates the Power of Theatre

Swathi Chaganty

“I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.” ― Oscar Wilde

This could not be further from the truth for us at Population First, for arts and theatre are some of the core tools of our outreach. Be it street plays in collaboration with Theatre of Relevance or college productions across the city of Mumbai on gender-based issues, school plays on sanitation in Shahapur Zilla Parishads or theatre workshops for our village level committees and health service providers in the past, have deeply affected the audience and the participants alike. For some, the plays left an indelible mark on the current state of affairs in the society while for some the art of acting and theatre as a tool helped understand their own role in the society and its development.

So, it was only logical progression for us to honour the art form itself in our Laadli Media and Advertising Awards for Gender Sensitivity (LMAAGS).

And as the world celebrates this art form today, we thought of taking a trip down the memory lane, when Theatre became one of our major categories at the National LMAAGS.

2016-2017

Saat Teri Ekvees

In its 3^rd season, Saat Teri Ekvees, a Manhar Gadhia Productions, has a new set of monlogues by women and has an underlying theme of “desire”. It explores narratives on Survival, Intimacy, Being Oneself, Motherhood, Love, To Be Born and Appreciation. Some stories evoke heart-warming smiles, others evoke a soul-searching silence but all makes one sit-up and notice a woman’s soul and situations. The play deals with women characters that have shown strength and courage to establish their individuality in an unsupportive social structure.

2015-2016

Shinkhandi – The Story of the In-Betweens

A comic, tongue-in-cheek, re-telling of the story of Shinkhandi; mixing the traditional with the contemporary, the grandeur of physical Indian storytelling and contemporary English verse – questioning gender, sexuality, masculinity, femininity, and everything in between. This unique perspective and the conversational style of the play motivates the audience to examine their own biases and realise the futility of the labels that society enforces.

2014-2015

Ila by The Patchworks Ensemble

Directed by Puja Sarup and Sheena Khalid, ‘Ila’, looks at gender, its related myths as well as the dilemmas and the importance they play in our lives today. The story is about a king who ventures into an enchanted forest and is transformed by a spell. As the moon waxes and wanes so does Ila, turning from man to woman and back to man. With ever-changing landscapes sometimes in ancient land and sometimes in the local trains of Mumbai- and leaps in time, his chorus takes the audience through a provocative, playful and exciting journey that questions what it means to “be a women/man and everything in between.”

2013-2014

Jug Jug Jiyo

An innovative play in Hinglish, Jug Jug Jiyo, directed by Smita Bharti, unravels the lives of two women across three decades, who are sharing a house in a small town. The play begins with the visit of their children who are in a live-in-relationship in Mumbai to their home town to meet their parents. The new dynamic in the family leads to a small confrontation and lays bare the hidden past of the two women until there is nothing left to lay bare. The story intimately journeys through hard hitting topics of social stigma of unmarried and pregnant women, marital rape, female foeticide, infanticide, trafficking and illegal surrogacy. Jug Jug Jiyo is an entertaining yet socially relevant play that compels one to think of the many messages it wants to deliver. It ends with love and hope that change is possible.

2012-2013

Baaware Maan Ke Sapne

An all women production, ‘Baaware Maan Ke Sapne’ enacted by homemakers who have gone through vigorous training of discipline of time, space and body, besides sessions on acting, communication etc. The protagonist Amma, an elderly woman decides to visit her daughter in London, and in her preparation for the voyage gets together with all the women in her family who share their stories – each being ruthless commentary on social evils that plague us to this day. The play intelligently wove excerpts from various stories by Indian women writers like Jhumpa Lahiri, Lalitambika Antarjanam, dealing with tradition and scepticism, collective responsibility and individual choice, into its narrative.

2011-2012

OK Tata Bye, bye

Based on the Bachchda women who, by tradition, are sex workers and bread winners in their family, OK Tata Bye, bye, is a poignant play on a community that follows the matrilineal system. The play is based on filmmakers trying to capture the lives of the community on camera but they soon realize that these girls maybe naïve but not fools and it is the filmmakers who are the ones facing some hard questions.

“Great theatre is about challenging how we think and encouraging us to fantasize about a world we aspire to.” – Willem Dafoe

Women and Forests

International Day of Forests

Swathi Chaganty

“The future of the planet concerns all of us, and all of us should do what we can to protect it. As I told the foresters, and the women, you don’t need a diploma to plant a tree,” said Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her exemplary work in the field of environmental conservatism, women’s rights, and led the charge of reforestation in Kenya.

And she is one of the many who have worked tirelessly in the field of forest conservation, environment protection and biodiversity preservation. From Margret Murie and Celia Hunter who shouldered the responsibility of safeguarding the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to Rachel Carson – an author, whose passion for environment and acute observation of conventional farming and its impacts on the environment and public health led to the development of the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) in the US to Jane Goodall the world renowned anthropologist and primatologist who made conservation and animal welfare her life’s mission to Vandana Shiva – who began her life in environmental activism and studies by documenting  the progress of the Chipko Movement in real time in the late 1980s.

And the achievements of these women trailblazers did not just fulfil the singular goal of forest conservation and biodiversity preservation but it did something more than that. Through each of their journeys, they encouraged hundreds and thousands of women to join their efforts and brought to the forefront the dynamic of “women and forests”.

Indigenous and rural women living in forests in many parts of the world are tasked with feeding and taking care of the family and that includes foraging for medicinal herbs, gathering food and fuel wood, collecting water. Thus, they are equal stakeholders in the forest ecosystem, interacting with every aspect of forest life, the wilderness, the illegal felling, the legal but destructive mining, good and bad conservation management and practices as well as the complicated land rights issues.

Therefore, understanding their challenges, viewing forest conservation and management and biodiversity protection from their perspective will not only give a new impetus to this endeavour but also make this journey a lot more holistic and sustainable. While the governments and think tanks engage with this head on, we as responsible citizens of the world have but one job, to be informed and educated.

Therefore, this International Forest Day, we have found three comprehensive resources that focus on the involvement of women in forest conservation.

World Rainforest Movement: An international initiative that focuses on the challenges faced by and solutions developed by the indigenous and peasant communities from the Global South. Their compendium – Women, forests and plantations. The Gender Dimension – published in 2005 presents several cases studies and articles focusing on the challenges of mining, illegal felling and climate change.

Picture Source: World Rainforest Movement

Forests and Gender: Another brilliant compilation by Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) – an advocacy that focuses on women’s rights, social, economic and environmental justice — that has compiled case studies from several countries across the world focused on the relationship between gender and forest conservation and issues such as climate change. This 123-page quick read, published in collaboration with International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) also has a dedicated section aimed at possible strategies and management processes that can be adopted to gain a gender perspective in nature conservation management and climate change action plans.

Picture Source: Forests & Gender by WEDO and IUCN

Women’s Earth &Climate Action Network, International (WECAN): A solution-based organization that collaborates with women worldwide in policy advocacy, grassroots projects, trainings and building a climate justice movement. One of their major projects Women forForests aids indigenous women in their efforts to stand up to the extractive industries such as mining, felling, and expansive industrial agriculture that are threatening the very ecosystems they live in. Their Women Speak initiative is an international collaboration of collecting stories and cases studies of women who are at the frontlines of climate change.

Picture Source: wecaninternational.org

So, let us keep ourselves educated and informed, learn to critically view our existing systems through different lenses, and while we do that put into practice simple actions at an individual level because as Wangari Maathai said, you do not need a diploma to plant a tree.