Blooming Women’s Day

Dongri’s medical unit staff, Dr. Pradnya, had sweetly requested us to plan a women’s day celebration the next day. Since it was a very short notice we were thinking whether we should take it or not, because the next afternoon, we also had the Safar Zindagi Ka (Ep 2) – A Story of Resilience and Hard Work planned. But later we decided to accept this genuine, innocent request. So we planned for the session immediately along with preparing for the Safar Zindagi Ka (SZK) interview. However, the next morning when we reached Dongri, we were informed that  the celebration needed to be shifted ahead by one more day. So we simply focussed on SZK for that day and just kept our patience and held on to our enthusiasm for the Women’s Day celebration until the next day.

All the ladies staff came together in the girl’s section hall. Sneha had prepared a beautiful centerpiece. We welcomed all the women by tying a flower mala in their hand. They felt so special with just this small gesture. Then the girls also participated. The surprise package was that two sirs from the boy’s section also joined us and participated which was actually a moral support to Karan, otherwise he would be only male between 30 females. Me and Sneha were smiling at Karan when he called the two sirs with him. Moreover, what was more intriguing was that the female guards from the girl’s section also joined for the session – they rarely join in such sessions. Eventually, they not only joined us, they had a wonderful time, enjoyed themselves and were very active participants throughout.

The session started with 2 minutes of silence. Then I opened with the question, “why do we celebrate women’s day?” and shared some context before asking others to share their thoughts: “History has been showing a woman’s struggle of surviving and making her dreams come true. She is fighting, adjusting, competing with society or family for freedom which is actually her right.” Everyone shared their opinions on this opening. One teacher said that “every day is women’s day since equality should be there everyday, not just on a special occasion.” The PO said, “when men will stand with us in Kitchen it will truly be women’s day.” Deputy ma’am said, “at least we are aware of our rights but still there are many ladies who are not aware that they have certain rights to live a simple and fulfilled life. They don’t know the meaning of freedom. Also, women need to support women – currently, very often women only become roadblocks for other women.” Dr. Pradnya  shared that “we have to celebrate this day for the struggle we had in our life. This is the day we are our own.” Girls also shared about child marriage and how many families feel that a girl is a burden. All these sharings made the environment more meaningful and rich. Then we played some beautiful commercial ads with meaningful messages regarding the stereotypical attitude of the world while looking at women and their role and how this needs to change. These made everyone reflect and appreciate the messages conveyed and also to some degree connect it to their lives.

From there, we had planned some games for the group and everyone was excited to know what was in store. We made 3 groups for the games and asked them to assign a captain and give a name for each of their groups. The groups came up with interesting names representing strength – Chandrayaan, Aadishakti and Superwoman. There was a lot of excitement and everyone forgot their age and became little girls (and boys). Each and every person in that room was laughing a lot!

Karan was the facilitator and that day he had to use his highest voice tone to give instructions in so much noise. Karan was giving points to each group and so everyone was trying to do their best for their team. Every group leader was behind Karan and pleaded to him for increasing the points. Everyone was in a jolly mood. One of the games was the acting version of Chinese whisper where participants had to show the message to each other by enacting the phrase. Famous old movie dialogues were taken as phrases for the teams to enact. The outcome was unimaginable and so were the laughs! The girls and the staff were playing together as a team and forgot their differences, like a flawless unity of two rivers, two colors. Each and every one of them had great fun.