Ruhani Kaur
A VISUAL STORYTELLER
A Lost Childhood
This ongoing series is an exploration of the stark sexualization of the childhood of adolescent girls in India from the day their menstruation begins. Girls as young as 10, are getting their periods these days! From that day the carefree loitering of her childhood is over; she is now seen as a moral responsibility to be veiled. She can no longer wear frocks or go out to the park even with her female friends. Even her cousin brother is not considered safe company.
Famida stopped going to school when she reached puberty but continues her religious education at home. She read that girls who indulge in wearing nail polish before marriage have their nails pulled out of their fingers after their burial! 15-year-old Nisha, a girl from a Rajasthani community, keeps reassuring her mother with her good behaviour to ward off the constant threat of early marriage.
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The fear of child marriage, the claustrophobia of their strict curfews while their brothers loiter freely, and the shame of isolation during dirty menstruation days are their teenage realities. The moral brainwashing that they are subjected to internalizes their fear, shame and insecurity that leads to self-censorship.
The very parents who would like to avert this sexualisation of their girl’s childhood, in fact, initiate and feed the process. By confining girls from public spaces with strict curfews. The tension that girls who do stray into these male dominated spaces face is intimidating.
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Most girls from restrictive family setups have extremely simple dreams- to be able to loiter at night, freewheel in cycles, laugh out aloud with their friends or go to see the Qutab Minar. 13-year-old Sumati in Maharashtra dreams of singing and dancing with abandon in the meadows, oblivious to her goats running astray. Some dream of wearing short clothes like their favourite actresses do, or of becoming a reality TV star in a talent show.
Above: In some parts of rural Uttar Pradesh, young girls are allowed to play, but only within the confines of their terrace. The streets are for the boys.
Below: 16-year-old Rani’s 9-year-old brother Danish taunts her, “Those boys were singing for you, right?” Rani says, “
He doesn’t approve of me standing near the window of my house.” While Danish has been given a mobile phone by his parents, Rani doesn’t have access to one.
Above: Reshma used to go up to her terrace and nostalgically watch younger girls play at the neighbouring rooftops. When her mother saw that many of the boys would look up to stare at her, she got a curtain put up, obstructing Reshma from public view.
Below: When Tania told her mother that her chunni/veil had been pulled by a boy in school, her mother felt powerless. “We are poor people, we don’t have the ability to fight so we told put daughter to sit at home.” The girls of Mujheri in Faridabad went on to sit on a hunger strike to ask for a high school in their own village to avoid harassment on the way.
Above: 15 year old Soudomini Behera of Penabali in Kandhamal comes back cycling from tuition after dark to her village. For her security her grandfather follows her on a cycle carrying a torch to show her the way.
Below: A part of the front yard is cordoned off with an old sari, behind which 15-year-old Pallavi (name changed) sleeps during her periods. She wears the same clothes and uses the same utensils every month during her periods as they are considered unclean.
Above: After Pallavi’s 18-year-old sister Priyanka’s periods are over, she has a bath, lights an incense (agarbatti) and prays infront of the Bhakti (godess) they believe in. Now she is deemed cleansed and can come in freely inside the house.
Below: When Uparpada came to know about her daughter’s menarche she summoned her back from her hostel immediately. She instructed her to confine herself in her room and not interact with any male. On the seventh day of her isolation she was to cleanse herself and deck up for a family feast as part of the ritual followed in her village in Kandhamal, Odisha.
Above: Anjali (in the pic) is just 16 years old and her sister Sunita, 15. They were married off to two brothers by her adopted uncle. Child marriage is a norm amongst migrant Rajasthani communities. It’s just been 10 months, but Anjali has already lost her first child at birth.
Below: Sunita (in the pic) and Anjali were married off together to keep the wedding costs low. Neither of them had seen the boys they were married to. From an urban slum in Delhi they had a tough time adjusting to a rural town in Rajasthan and Sunita came back after a couple of months.
A part of the photo-essay was used in a UNFPA publication Dignity, Safety and Freedom.
I also made short films covering UNFPA's work with adolescent girls across the country.