Jain Spirit 2002 06 No 11

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 37

Girls Can't Study?
Aunt Jasi, was also extremely bright, the only other child in extinct, the pre-television age, when all performance was the family to win a full scholarship, in her case to attend the live. Life in Gokhlana today has changed little from what it first school for girls opened in Jetpur. But at age twelve, she was when Motiba lived there, with one portentous too was made to quit school. She was eighty-three years old exception: on the roof of the house next to the one in which when she told me this and as she spoke her voice rose and Motiba was born is a new television satellite receiver dish. trembled with emotion. "I was just as smart as he was!" she It has been put to practical use by the lady of the house who cried. Jasiphaiba's revenge was to make sure that her own has neatly laid hand-printed patties of cow dung out to dry daughter got as full an
around its base. education as possible,
When my father, eventually completing a “Motiba truly belonged to an Dhirajmami, and I visited doctoral degree in social work.
Gokhlana, we were invited by Motiba made the most of age now extinct, the pre-television the village elders to have tea in her little girl freedoms while
the best room in the village: the she could. She romped in the age, when all performance was room directly under the roof of fields of wheat, sorghum,
the dung-adorned satellite dish. pulses and cotton that
live.”
where the only television set in surrounded the clustered
town sat protectively shrouded earthen houses of Gokhlana.
by an embroidered coverlet. She went barefoot most of the time, tripping across the Every available male in Gokhlana pressed into that room, fields and over irrigation ditches. One of her favourite squatting on his haunches and staring at us as we sipped treats were the fresh-cut stalks of sugar cane, which she scalding hot fresh tea - very strong, very milky, and very chewed thoroughly to extract every last drop of sweet juice. sweet - out of a hodgepodge collection of old chipped As a little girl, she was allowed to fly kites and play catch saucers. With considerable pride, the village elders took and marbles. With the other little girls in the village, she pains to make sure we noticed, acknowledged, and praised played at cooking with a miniature set of cookware made of the presence of the television set in their midst; an ultimate unfired terra-cotta. They also sang songs, particularly proof of Gokhlana's progress. wedding songs, accompanying themselves with silver bells, beating out the time with dandia sticks. "You are all so © Mira Kamdar: 1999 sweet, it just makes me feel like singing," began one The above article is extracted from 'Motiba's Tattoos ' by popular song of the day.
Mira Kamdar: Ms. Kamdar lives in Washington State, USA What Motiba remembered the most about her early and is a Professor of Sociology. years in Gokhlana were the plays, know as bhavais, given by itinerant performers who earned their living travelling from village to village. There were re-enactments of stories from the great Hindu epic tales of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and from the folk tales of Kathiawar and the neighbouring Rajasthan. Every village had its own versions of regional folk plays, and these were performed on holidays. As acting by women was considered to be barely one step away from prostitution, all the female roles in these plays were performed by men. When Motiba was a little girl, the most famous of these actors was Jai Shankar Sundari, sundari meaning 'beautiful woman'. Jai Shankar Sundari, based in the big city of Ahmedabad, set the fashion of the day for women in small towns and villages throughout Gujarat, and the women in Gokhlana kept up with these trends as best they could.
One of Motiba's strongest memories of her days in Gokhlana was a visit to the village by a troupe of itinerant
A GRANDDAUGHTER'S JOURNEY tightrope walkers. Motiba was only three or, at most, five
INTO HER INDIAN FAMILYS PAST years old. The performers strung a rope between the poles and made their way, step by teetering step, over the heads of
MIRA KAM DA the enthralled villagers. Motiba was as awestruck as any of the local spectators. She truly belonged to an age now
Motiba's Tattoos
June - August 2002. Jain Spirit
35