In 2006, at the peak of the second Jan Andolan, NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati found herself back on the streets of Kathmandu, her home in Nepal. She joined the resistance with her camera, both to bear witness, and also to document hundreds of men and women in public spaces to finally topple the monarchy through sustained struggle.
Thus emerged “Borderlines”, a seven-part video series documenting how feminists work, intervene and connect the dots across the region to create knowledge in South Asia.
In May 2022, through a contest “Mera Sapna” (My Dreams) the National Coalition Advocating for Adolescent Concerns (NCAAC).
We know very little about the life of the ordinary woman prisoner. She is either non-existent in popular imagination or made out to be an extraordinary deviant, transgressing all codes of social morality. But what constitutes the ordinary woman prisoner’s ‘criminality’? What lies at the heart of it? What are her dreams, desires and fears? What does a post-prison life look for her?
In this episode, meet Kusum from Mahrauni, Uttar Pradesh. Kusum has been working with Sahjani Shiksha Kendra since 2008. Knowledge has strengthened her and she has a strong understanding of the law.
In this episode, meet Rajkumari Prajapati from Lalitpur, Uttar Pradesh. In 2008, 19-year-old Rajkumari joined Sahjani Shiksha Kendra as a teacher, where she taught girls and women in a residential school. Since then, she handles cases as a caseworker and also makes films with The Third Eye.
In this episode, meet Shabina Mumtaz from Banda, Uttar Pradesh. Shabina has been working with Vanangana NGO for 17 years on gender based violence cases. She says, “I do this work to process my own feelings and help others break free from instances of violence, focusing more on mental and sexual violence.”
In this story, a caseworker walks us through her Sunday, that day of the week when she takes her son to visit her husband’s village. What awaits her there are the probing questions of neighbours as well as the calming presence of her best friend – a Mahua tree.
The easiest thing to tell a woman in a violent marriage is to just leave. But is leaving always that simple? From financial vulnerabilities to a loss of kinships, to a turbulent clash of hope and fear, to a complex interplay of love and desire, the decision to not leave are also stories that need to be heard.
Kya Hai Yeh Samjhauta works with material of the everyday, scraps of cloth, needle thread and the timbre of human voices (“The voices of the caseworkers animate the dolls, and is the documentary part of this,”) to explore these questions. The scraps of cloth in turn, animate the grain of the voices, to gesture at the many choices women make when faced with domestic violence.
