Intertwined Destinies

In these trying pandemic-hit times, Ruhani Kaur explores the intertwined destinies of daughters struggling to complete their education as child brides and mothers fighting for financial independence as working women with low literacy.

Within half an hour of crossing the last high-rise tower on the highway in the satellite city of Gurugram, Haryana, one comes to a well-known picnic spot beside a lake named Damdama. A quaint urban village, it is home to many Gujjar families of North India. Priyanka, Shiwani, Meenakshi and Monu are childhood friends who grew up here and are still classmates at the same school, before life takes them in different directions.

Priyanka at a local temple in Damdama, where newlywed couples mark their fingerprints as a symbolic declaration of their union.

Ambitious Child Brides

When she was in Class 5 and not yet a teen, Priyanka came to know that her family was planning to marry her off, along with her cousin sister, to two brothers – a practice customary amongst Gujjar families. As Priyanka’s cousin had failed in a subject in her Class 10 examinations and was too embarrassed to go back to school, their families were quick to make the most of this ‘opportunity’.

Now in Class 11, Priyanka has stayed back with her parents till date. But with her seventh year of marriage coming up next year. it will be time for her ‘Gauna’ – the ritual sendoff to one’s in-law’s home..

She has heard murmurs in the house that she’ll be sent as soon as Priyanka’s husband gets a job, whether or not she finishes her schooling by then is her fate. She pours her anxiety into her dairy, “Don’t shackle me with marriage, I’m too young… I don’t want to go to my mother-in-law’s, leaving my doll behind.” Not too academically inclined, she goes to help out in the beauty parlour her brother recently opened after school in the hope that they’d let her stay longer.

As India discusses an increase in marriageable age of girls from 18 to 21, the 16 percent currently married 15-19 year-old girls like them are increasing in number. Especially in these pandemic-hit times when ten million girls face the risk of dropping out of secondary schools (source: Right to Education Forum, January 24, 2021), the threat of almost as many child brides is frighteningly real.

Meenakshi is the only girl in the first-ever 11th-grade Science batch, Class of 2021, in Abheypur’s government school, Gurugram.

Meenakshi, unlike her friends, had been elated – and with good reason. In June 2021, she’d become the only girl in a class of five in the first-ever Science batch for Class 11 in their school. “I don’t know about the right age (to get married) but till our dreams don’t come true, we shouldn’t get married!” she’d said, having broken through her own little glass ceiling – or so she had thought. After two trying years of the pandemic, many girls in her village have been married off.

On 5th Feb 2022, Meenakshi too joined the statistic. Her friend Monu, the only non-gujjar in their group, did try to stand up for her friend but Meenakshi’s parents justified, “We can’t afford two separate weddings for our daughters.” A new mobile phone buzzing constantly with messages from her 16-year-old husband, henna on her hands jingling with red bangles, Meenakshi has been told she’ll be allowed 5 years to finish her studies.

Shiwani, her elder sister Ashu and their mother, at their home – all three share the same fate of having been child brides.

Last year, Shiwani completed her Class 10 with 100% marks! A quiet girl by nature who avoids even the mention of marriage,she’s more excited about discussing a possible future in banking. Shiwani is acutely aware that for girls like her, education affords their only chance of escaping the vicious cycle of financial dependence that continues to limit the freedoms of their mothers.

The NGO Breakthrough works with girls like her through their program ‘Taaron ki Toli’ (Group of Stars), so that they can recognizeand raise their voice against gender-based discrimination. With a gradual exposure to an alternative life, her self-belief has slowlyincreased. But when her wedding album comes out of the cupboard, it jolts her back to reality – she knows that post Class 12, herlife plans aren’t hers to make.

‘On 21st February, 2018’ is written boldly on the album, witness to the day Sudesh’s three daughters were married off on the same day as the wedding of their elder cousin sister. Shiwani’s mother Sudesh was too upset to even eat at the wedding of her three daughters; even so, her ailing husband’s brother paid her no heed. “Nothing’s changed. I was married off at 15, and so was my daughter”, she recounts stoically.

Ashu on her first visit home after the send-off to her in-laws. She now dresses up in all her finery, like most newly-wed brides.

Shiwani’s elder sister who was married that same day, Ashu confesses, “I couldn’t sleep at night, as there was constant pressure on my parents to send me over. My father assured us, he’ll let us study till Class 12 but after that, it would be up to our in-laws.” While he kept his promise and Ashu was sent off to her in-laws at Jhajhar only this year, it happened even before her Class 12 results were declared. Her good performance has made Ashu keen to study further, perhaps even pursue Law, plans that even her father is unaware of. More realistic than her younger sister, she admits, “I’ll definitely ask, but I can’t insist. If my in-laws refuse, I’ll feel bad but I’ll have to stay quiet like other girls and live with it.” Not even a year from her send off, Ashu is due to give birth in Feb 2022 and now she probably will never ask. Soon after, Shiwani ran away to a shelter home.

Mahendri, mother of 18-year-old Karishma, video-calls her 11-month-old granddaughter as the girls of the house look on.

Karishma, from Ashu’s batch recalls, “In 2018, many girls were running away from my village, and the ‘sarpanch’ (village head) even declared that if these girls are found, they should be shot!” As a result, she and her three sisters were married off promptly. Married at age 16, her in-laws’ house is in Ghitorni, New Delhi; they are stauncher than the people in her village. “It’s not the place, but the mindset that matters. “My in-laws had initially said, they would let us younger sisters study but my husband threatened to commit suicide if I wasn’t sent over. The only reason I could complete Classes 11 and 12 was because of the pandemic. As classes went online,” she chuckles, “I would hide and study.”

When she found out that she was pregnant at just 17, Karishma didn’t want to have the baby as that would mean missing school. Her mother and her elder sister coaxed her to change her mind, playing on fears that a pill would affect her chances ofconceiving again. “When my daughter was just one-and-a-half months old, I came home to give my Class 11 exams.” she says. Her mother and maternal aunt, who became sisters-in-law in one family, have now vowed not to get the remaining six girls married till they finish their studies. While Karishma is resigned to not attending college, she still dreams of being self-sufficient one day. “Maybe, an online job without letting her husband know”, she whispers.

On a bright autumn day, there – up on a rickety seat of a Ferris wheel at the picnic spot – the four friends give excited whoops like typical teenagers. As they start spinning faster and faster, the girls of Damdama take their shared steps in the cycle of life, never quite in control of how their lives will run.

Mothers Stepping Out

The 62-metre-high mountain of garbage that the capital city of New Delhi generates, is the source of income for women working in the Bhalswa landfill. During the pandemic, there have been few takers for the sellable trash that Meena, Sita and other femalewaste pickers collect. Even so, they climb up every day searching for scraps of hope.

Even when there are few takers, waste picker Meena spends long hours in the Bhalswa landfill to pay for her daughter’s tuition.

30-year-old Sita from Samastipur, Bihar decided not to go back to her village during the pandemic. Here, at least, a local NGO named Chintan would donate rations to them. In the village, there was no work. Barely 14 when Sita got married, her eldest daughter Shweta has now reached that age. Not having to go to school, she helps her mother with all the chores at home –collecting the water, cleaning the house and cooking the meals.

Sita leaves for the landfill at 3.30 am every morning to avoid the harsh glare of the sun. Reeling under loans that keep piling up, she needs her daily medication to be able to work. Shweta prefers to look after the house, as she finds the landfill too smelly. She doesn’t let her mother enter the kitchen till she’s had a bath after returning from work. Sita’s younger daughter, on the other hand, accompanies her every evening to sort and help sell the garbage she’s collected, before it can get stolen.

Sita, back home after a gruelling day at the landfill. Her daughter Sweety goes there in the evenings to sell what Sita’s collected.

Shweta has been running the house during the pandemic. With online classes too, her day is nearly as long as her mother’

With schools shut and classes going online, their children needed smartphones, internet connections and tuitions to keep their studies going – adding to the mothers’ swelling costs. Around 94% of women workers are employed in the informal sector and 53%of them have ended up taking loans which has led them into the vicious cycle of debt traps. An uphill task for them, it has been tough on the kids, too. They’ve had to deal with adapting to online worksheets, poor connectivity and limited access to mobile phones.

Hit the hardest by the pandemic, women workers in the informal sector are likely to be stuck in debt traps for years to come.

At another part of the capital, in the densely populated lanes of Sangam Vihar, 30-year-old Nazia Khatoon steps out to work.She is the first woman in her family to do so. Women working is frowned upon by both her in-laws and from her parents’ side. “They feel you should learn to live within what your husband brings home”, she says. But Nazia wants to help her family tide through thetough times of the pandemic, as her husband – a tailor by profession – has lost his job in the second wave.

The family hasn’t had enough to recharge their phone for several days, and their three kids are missing out on online classes. “If the pandemic hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have gone to work,” she shares. Once school opens full-time, Nazia is not sure if she’ll be able to continue working. She’ll have to drop and pick up her five-year-old, and her 12-year-old daughter Sania won’t be at home to help with the housework.

Had the pandemic not hit, Nazia Khatoon may never have started working as her youngest daughter Yasmeen is just 5 years old.

The first woman in her family to step out to work, Nazia is helping her family tide through. Her husband has lost his job.

Nazia’s neighbour Rajrani works with her at the spice packaging unit in their locality. Mother to three teenage girls Neha, Neeluand Varsha and a 11-year-old boy named Rajesh, Rajrani has been dealing with an abusive marriage.

The shadow pandemic of violence for her intensified, when her husband wasn’t getting any work. “One day, he even tried to strangulate me,” she says in anger. The eldest daughter Neha stands up for her mother and now, she too is in her father’s bad books.

Rajrani on her way to work at the spice packaging unit. Neelu (in blue) joins her mother, while she waits for her college admission.

Today is a big day for both daughter and mother. Neha is leaving home to take up a job at Jhajjar with the NGO Breakthrough. Shebeams with anticipation as she tries on her helmet, while waiting for her ride there with a family friend. Rajrani is understandablyanxious but she knows that her husband will neither fund Neha’s studies any further, nor let her work while living there. This is theonly way out. Even though she’s moving away from the city to a rural area, Neha just can’t wait to leave Sangam Vihar. And Rajrani feels, even as she holds back her tears, that her daughter’s journey has just begun…

An excited Neha tries out her helmet for the ride to her new life in Jhajhar, where she will join the NGO Breakthrough.

Rajrani struggles to hold back her tears as she bids goodbye to her daughter Neha, who just can’t wait to leave Sangam Vihar.

This work was made as the National Geographic Covid Grantee in 2021. It was featured in the National Geographic Book 'Inside the Curve: Stories from the Pandemic' and was one of the 10 works in the photobook 'Still' by 1Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery as part of their project Pandemic as a portal made in 2022. The story was published partly in BBC.