shuruvaat...

day one of training...

as we reached brindaban my heart which was somewhere in my "sukha gala" popped out for a second... there were tiny kids who come there to play and 10, 12 curious-but-at-the-same-time-skeptical women... thought of the domesticated deer eyes on ross island who look at tourists a bit mockingly as if we are the weird ones (quite right too!)... hmmm...

alam introduced the programme as amit set the laptop and the speakers. rakesh spoke to dadi i.e. janakidevi, president of mahila mandal, (she is a verrrry old and rock solid mixed with tadka tongue)... initially i was fidgeting restlessly but once it started, it went off smoothly most of the time...

gist of what i said -

community radio is radio productions made by a commnunity for the community, ways of broadcast can differ, AIR, worldspace, internet, narroawcasting, a separate station, all of this...

local issues which may never be addressed by the mainstream media can be tackled...

even if the community cant reach the authorities, their voices can... people who obviously matter, and others who may not but why not reach them too...

they would have learnt an additional skill of programme producing...

they can talk about good things (a kid topping ssc - couldnt think of anything better), bad things (so many - electricity, funds allocations, water... ), information and awareness (health, disaster management, education related)...

then i played a programme on livelihood for about 10 minutes... [arif later pointed that any english anywhere in my talk or in an interview in the programme is not understood and so not appreciated! it is an illusion that people speak hinglish... they dont... point taken... ]

i asked about possible subjects... two oldish women complained about not getting their houses after tsunami... we discussed possibilities of making a programme on the subject of sheltering...

people here are weary of outsiders coming and handing out doses on development... as soon as someone said, "bahar se na jane kitne log aakar wapas chale jate hain.. kuch badalta nahi hai..." for a fraction of second thought this is clean bowled! but someone up there intervened in my head and i said, "isi liye to aaphi ko seekha rahe hain... taki aapko kisi baharwale ki jaroorat hi na pade!" (PHEW in my head with one trickle of sweat...) some nodding smiles from the audience...

then we divided them in groups of four per group... by this time few more women had arrived and we had four groups of four members... when i asked them to pick a subject for their group, the group with those two women complaining about shelters said they would do a programme on electricity... (question mark feeling is right!) and what i did not expect happened...

one of them was annoyed... argued with sukhada... that we dont want to do a programme on her shelter problem first... sukhada being our spunky sukhada argued firmly with a sweet smile... that it was HER group members who picked the subject... i tried intervening with a promise that we make tsunami programme before electricity one... and that we all would make many more programmes together... wagera wagera... (small phew again!)

as i sat among them and discussed different topics like water, possibilities for educated women sitting "khali" at home, poverty, tsunami (of course!), electricity (also!) i started hoping that they would turn up on wednesday... sangeetha and four others have promised to...

tomorrow a repeat of this in wandoor... but the crowd is co-ed i.e. guys and girls... i still have enough butterflies in my tummy to keep me on high alert all of tomorrow... and perhaps longer...