Party wear, dress shopping and child marriage

Last week my new aunty and cousin (Akshear) plotted to dress me up in my aunty's 'party wear'. So at the agreed time of 8.30am I went up to their room ready to be covered in Rajput clothes and jewellery. First it was on with the blue and pink sequined skirt, or ghaghara, then the matching crop top type thing covered with a blouse. The top part of the outfit is known as the choli. Rajasthani women wear a 4 metre length of cloth called an odhni tucked into their skirt and draped across their right shoulder. This is used as a veil, both to sheild their faces from the sun, and from men. On a trip out of the house, a young Rajasthani will almost always have her face covered by her odhni. I had a matching pink one to put on.

Lipstick was smeared on my lips and eyelids, kohl powder under my eyes and a red bindi on my forehead. Red vermilion powder was applied carefully to my centre parting using a hair clip. This is the symbol of a married woman. I was laden with bangles on each wrist, and given a heavy gold necklace to wear, and gold, diamond and ruby earrings which looped over the top of my ears as well as dangling down. A rakhri, a circular piece of jewellery on a cotton thread was placed to hang down from my forehead and tied to my ponytail. A gold and diamond string in circular patterns was placed on top and tied around my head. Finally I was ready, and told to sit in a certain position on my aunty's bed with legs bent and one hand on top of the other. She wears this outfit and full jewellery for parties, and has much heavier dresses to wear on special occassions like weddings. 25 photos later and I was done, and the hour provided me with some entertainment and insight into the traditions of the Rajput lady before it was time to get to the office and do some work.

Sunday is my day off, and yesterday I caught the local bus to Kishangarh, a small city about 45kms away from Laporiya in Ajmer District. Mama and her daughter Laxmi took me to do some fabric shopping so I could have my own cholis, ghaghara and odhnis made, although mine were to be from cotton and much less ornate than the party dress I'd tried on. The bus was how you imagine all buses in India to be like. Only around half the bus had seats and in every spare space there were people squeezed in and men hanging out the open door. Everytime a woman got on, a seat was made available to her and it seemed a jovial atmosphere. Laxmi said afterwards, "Everyone was talking about you on the bus and you don't mind?". I'm an oddity to them and I'm sure they are wondering what I'm doing on a village bus with a Rajput lady, commenting on my clothes, my jewellery and the fairness of my skin. I don't know what they are saying about me, but I accept I will be talked about, smile alot at people and hope for the best. There's not much else I can do!

Mama knew the best shop to go to for bangles, the best for jewellery and the best for Rajput material. The fabric shop was packed full of ladies sitting on the floor and examining the cloths the shop assistant had pulled out for them. Shelves were laden high with material in a bright spectrum of colours, mostly pinks, reds and yellow in keeping with the Rajasthani look.


Mama kept saying I was a big size so needed 7 metres of fabric for a skirt and top because of my height. The normal is 5 metres. Therefore I had only three patterns to choose from in my abnormally huge size, and chose two. Once the skirt pattern had been chosen it was time to find suitable material for extra tops and the odhnis (scarves). In India when you go clothes shopping the assistants have pretty strong ideas about the colour combinations you should go for, and what match. One young boy showed me fabric for an odhni which apparentley was very new and in vogue and because of it's green, orange and pink striped tie-dye effect would go with any ghaghara. Every time he held up my two chosen skirt materials as evidence of the perfect match, all i could do is laugh in disbelief and think how it couldn't match any less. So I had to dissapoint the helpful sales assistant and Mama, and go for the dull plain tops. See photos to make your own mind up about the colour combinations.


Then it was off to the petticoat fabric shop, run by a retired army man in an old Haveli. It was filled with different coloured plain fabrics for very cheap prices. I bought a few metres of plain white cotton to cover my head and neck when on field trips, which is essential to survive the heat. The man took a shine to me and said I was his daughter. He showering me with gifts- a wall tidy thing, a strip of bright patterned fabric and half a towel. I imagined getting half a towel as a gift in England, but actually it will be perfect for weekends away. In a bid to pack light last weekend, I tried using a flannel as a towel and it wasn't really that effective. We stopped by a street trader on the way back to our car ride home and picked up some gold ribbon for the hems of my odhnis.

So I spent about £20 on material which will make me two skirts, four tops and three scarves. My boss' wife is a tailor so will stitch them up for about £1.50 per outfit. One thing I love about women going clothes shopping in India is that everyone gets to forget the housework and the cooking and become a designer for the day. Every outfit is tailored and customised to maximum effect. Colour combinations and clashes, material thickness and type, gold trim and jewellery are all minutely discussed and no two lady's outfits are the same. It provides a creativity that's hard to find in English clothes shopping, or one that comes at a high price back home. I think I'd like to put my sewing machine to good use and design my own clothes when I finally make it home.

And now for some more sobering reflections. I won't pretend I know a lot about child marriage but on Friday I was taken on a field trip with a few of the other staff to see some of GVNML's work in preventing child marriage and some of the good work they have done setting up resource centres for children in a successful school. With funding from Save The Children, books has been bought, public health leaflets laid out and children were encouraged to attend school by award winning teachers. I love the picture below because my two colleagues- Ramsharoop and Dasrat posed especially for it. They had been standing up but euthusiacially sat down and pretended to read with such intent. Today they proudly showed me a slide show they'd created to Hindi music with photos from the day.


Anyway, child marriage. A big issue here. I think I'm right in saying that villages in the Tonk district of Rajasthan have one of the highest rates of child marriage in India. We went to one village to talk to some of the children and theleaders and their families. Three of the children in the photo below are married- the boy fourth from the left and sitting at the front is 11 years old and has been married for three years. The girl on the left who must have been about 13 is also married, and the boy third from the left at the back. It seems that in this particular village it was proving difficult to convince parents not to arrange marriages for their children at a young age. The ratio of girl to boy babies is low in India, things are changing, but traditionally a female is not the desired sex for a newborn baby. This means families must find a match for their sons from the available girls and they get snapped up first. If there are two or three daughters in a family, to save money they get married in a group so some brides can be very young. It's the parents who carry on this tradition which has long been part of their lives and some are very reluctant to change their ways.


When young children are married, they usually live with their respective families until the girl reaches puberty, then she is brought to her husband's family home. They often lie together before this at family parties, and when they begin living together the girl soon falls pregnant. Jagveer said that it's generally thought a girl has problems if she hasn't had a child by the time she is 16. Usually it's 14 or 15 for the first child. The girl tends to give up school when she moves to her husband's house and instead gets involved in housework and helping to run the home. The boy, feeling that he is more man than child, thinks he must work to earn a living for his wife, so also gives up education and grows old before his time.

I'm sure there are a lot of factors surrounding the issue of child marriage and challenges in creating positive behaviour changes and I know I have just scratched the surface. There are places where GVNML have been more successful in creating changes to this practice. They educate the children in saying no to getting married young, and create model families declared 'child marriage free'. These families are honoured and given priority access to new development work in the village.

20 things you didn't know about my new life in Laporiya village

1. Laxman Singh's grandfather used to be King of Laporiya and a few other villages. I'm living with him and his extended family. They see themselves as members of the Rajput caste, one of the major Hindu warrior groups in India.
2. There are 150 different species of birds. Some are very rare, and it's because of GVNML's conservation programme these birds thrive here.
3. It's very hot in Rajasthan this time of year. In the nights I usually sleep on a day bed outside because my room is too hot. There's not much light pollution here so you can see all the stars.
4. My bedroom is just off a big courtyard and used to be a communal bathroom. It's completley tiled and still has lots of taps in it.
5. Indian toilets are not like the ones back home in England. I'm gradually getting the hang of them and have given up using toilet paper.
6. If I want a shower in the evening it's best to fill a bucket early in the morning, otherwise the water in the tank on the roof gets so hot during the day it's almost boiling.
7. Everyone who lives in Laporiya loves roti, they eat it three times a day normally with one or two vegetable dishes. There is no rice here and wheat is definitely the staple food.
8. My NGO, GVNML is working with a UK development agency called Wells for India. Through their funding GVNML have built lots of new wells in the surrounding villages and spread their innovative chouka system, changing the livelihoods of hundreds of local people. The parents of the girl in the photo can now afford to send her to school, thanks to the crops (field behind) they are now growing on land irrigated by a new water system.
9. My new boss, Jagveer (Laxman's brother), is big on badminton and usually starts the day playing it on a court drawn in the dust in the car park. He's a lot better than me and said my serve was poor- must try harder!
10. Laporiya runs on hot, milky, sweet Chai. I normally get woken up with a cup of chai at 6.45am, prepared by the office cook, who is a sweet lady called Sanju but we have trouble communicating with my limited Hindi and her limited English.
11. Sanju does a mean cold coffee, but only in the afternoon once the freezer has been on for a few hours. I'd say it's better than Cafe Coffee Day.
12. Laxman's father, Ragunate, has a 'mistake in the head' I'm told. He's physically fit but I think he has alzheimers and sometimes shouts or thinks it's dinner time when it's morning, or forgets he has eaten.
13. Laxman has adopted me as his daughter, and says it's now his responsibility to find me a husband. He has joked that when Rob visits in August we will have a big Rajasthani wedding. I wonder whether it would be legally binding!
    
14. Ratan (my new sister) is getting married in November or December- she has only met her husband to be once but seems pretty smitten with him. They tell me that at Rajpoot parties there is drink and non veg (ie. Meat!). My new mother has promised I can wear one of her party dresses too.
15. Spare time in the day is usually spent hiding from the 100 degree heat, inside a dark room with the desert cooler on and perhaps an Indian soap on sky tv (every family in the house has their own box).
    
16. One of our dogs, Jacqui seems to be fighting a losing battle with his fleas. If you give him any attention he nuzzles and leans against you and won't leave you alone. People often have to rescue me from him. I have to be careful not to get bitten.
    
17. You soon get used to the electricity cuts here. It's on from 7pm to 6am, then 11am to 4pm. It becomes an event when the lights and fans work again.
18. Laxman's wife, Anand, is basically in charge of cooking. She doesn't buy 'market food' like bread or biscuits, here they mill their own wheat flour and make their own butter from milk from their own cows. Much of her day is focused on preparing food.
19. In India, what your name means is very important. Anand (Mum) means very fine; Pratab (younger brother) means king; Akshay (cousin) means always win and Laxmi (younger sister) means god of money. When they asked me what my name meant, unfortunately I couldn't remember.
20. My new mum gave me a Rajasthani dress of hers and my sister and cousin had great fun dressing me up in it and getting the scarf just so. See the picture for the final result.