International Women's Day at the University

Yesterday was International Women's day, and the International Students and Scholars at the University organised a small celebration at the Union Lounge. Student representatives from different parts of the globe participated in their national costumes and spoke about their unique culture. At the ceremony we made a promise to fight against injustice, violence and any discrimination against the better sex. I would like all readers of the blog to make this promise to themselves.

This picture represents the diversity at the University of Arkansas. When you wish to see the unity just walk into a Razorback Match. 

The International Students and Scholars office had a essay contest and I won. I am copying my essay below and would like to dedicate it two of the best women I knew, and to every women who is fighting to make this world a better place.

Women grant the gift of life, but a bigger virtue they possess is the power to change lives. While the focus of the essay is “Women and education in the globalized world”, the irony of my choice is that both the women I will talk about were uneducated. I am referring to my grandmothers. My Dadi (Paternal Grandmother) and my Nani (Maternal grandmother) were two completely different personalities. While Dadi was headstrong and strong-willed, Nani was submissive and yielding. Yet, they had one thing in common: both knew the importance of education and never failed to instill that conviction in their children.

This is maybe the only picture I have of my grandmothers together. It was clicked during my brothers wedding.  My Dadi ( facing forward) always said that, to a moneylender the interest is more dear than the principal and her grandchildren were her interest. 

As was customary in their times, both my grandmothers were married off before their teens and expected to look after a household. I know that Nani had studied till grade 3, before she was made to drop out. She always said that she envied her school going brothers. I do not have a firsthand account of my Dadi’s education but knowing the customs of the times, she wouldn’t have fared any better than Nani.

Dadi and me. We fought a lot with each other. We used to joke that she was the  village  godmother and people would come to her for advice.

My Dada (Paternal Grandfather) was born into the family of a landowner and did not have many worries in life. However my Dadi desired better for her family and insisted that my grandfather take up a job in the town so he could provide a better education to his family. She wanted to live in a place where they had access to education to allow her children to find opportunities that were not available in the village. My grandfather was a foreman in a cement factory and the town they lived in had just one primary school. My grandmother had heard of a better school in the adjacent town which was 4 hours away by bus and decided that her children needed to study in the better school. However, instead of packing off her kids to a hostel, she shifted base to the adjacent town, while grandfather stayed back. I imagine living alone with seven kids, in those times, would not have been easy for her. She did not have any education and so she hired tutors to make up for her inability to teach her children. Thus she spent her entire youth away from her husband with just one desire: one day her entire brood would be educated and have respectable jobs. And it did come true; my dad and my uncle are engineers and another uncle is a doctor. All my aunts graduated (even though I hear, many of them would have happily skipped studies) and were married off. I lost my grandfather in 1996; he had long retired and had returned to the village to take up farming. After his demise, my grandmother took up the welfare of the fields and did a man’s job. She dealt with the workers, handled the household chores, and managed the accounts with minimum education. All alone, because she had wanted her sons to have jobs and have a better life than their cousins who were squabbling over a piece of land that was passed on in the family and now had 5 owners. Thus my grandmother lived her entire life with her head held high, always giving, never wanting.

I always thought, and still do, that my Nani was the most beautiful person in the  world. She was too shy to look straight into the camera. I don't have a single picture of her looking into the camera. 

My Nani, on the other hand, had a very sheltered life. She was always with her protective family and her only aim had been to provide for them. However, she had a passion. She loved to read. She had read all the classics in our mother tongue, Bengali. It was she who instilled the love of books in my mother who passed it on to my siblings and me. Nani had read every famous author by looking up for their translated version of their books. Dickens, Tagore, Tolstoy, she knew them all. And all this after having received just grade 3 education. I think she regretted not having received a higher education. She made up for it by reading everything she could lay her hands on. During our school holidays, the favorite time for my cousins and me was listening to her soothing voice talking about the works of Indian literary genius Rabindranath Tagore.

I am sure they must be smiling at me and my cousins, always wishing for the best for us. Maybe that is why I am here at the University of Arkansas, with the most amazing set of people.

I lost both my grandmothers in the past one year. Dadi passed away 3 days before I came to Arkansas for my MBA and Nani a few months ago before I was accepted into the Ph.D. program. Everything I am today I owe it to them for they instilled the value of education in my parents who passed it on.