nilima en el mundo

    Bhaskara’s dusty bare feet, which poked out from oversized pants, shifted until he caught my attention. He didn’t ask me for my south Indian breakfast, but just stared hungrily. I handed him a 2-rupee coupon (about four cents). That would suffice to buy a large scoop of oopama — hot wheat cereal with tomatoes, onions, chilies and spices.
“Thank you Auntie,” he mumbled in broken English. No longer wary of me, his dark eyes lit up and he smiled before darting off. I immediately wished I had given him more, and was ashamed at my wariness from having been conned in the past.
It was January ’05, I’d traveled to India through UVM’s URECA! or Undergraduate Research Endeavors Competitive Awards program. The grants are open to all undergrads, of whom 25 receive funding for independent projects. The winners ranged from “Feeding Preferences of Chagas Disease Vectors” to “The Infrared Reflectance Spectra of Titanium Optical Glass.” Mine is a documentary film about Jeevodaya, or Child Care India (CCI), a grass roots organization centered in Bangalore, which prevents child labor through education. I proposed to create a video that could educate viewers and spark people to donate, or at least inspire them towards other social action.
The project stemmed from an earlier trip to India and research on child labor. I knew, for example, “The Indian Constitution of 1950 declared that ‘the state shall endeavor to provide . . . free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years’ ” (Weiner 1991). Despite these stated goals, India’s literacy rate is 59% overall, and 48% for girls (CIA). Untold millions of children do not attend school and perform menial or dangerous tasks such as “ rag picking,” or dismantling used syringes. Aside from any intrinsic value education possesses, it has proven to be the single most effective way to end child labor and poverty, even leading to lowered birthrates through gender equality (Ehrlich et. al).
I left for India two days after exams, amidst moving out of my apartment, writing papers and dealing with a complicated Internal Review Board procedure. (The research aspect of my project dealt with surveying the kids—vulnerable populations with illiterate parents. This raised unexpected procedural hurdles for obtaining informed consent, and necessitated last-minute changes). My main translator couldn’t come, but two friends who had spoke Tamil and Telegu, agreed to help. I set off with two cameras, 25 mini DV tapes, a tripod, various mics, a very rough script and directions to Child Care India (directions which proved very challenging to my cab driver).
India’s educational failures are complex and attributed to many factors. The government, parents and employers often cite poverty as the main inhibitor. This doesn’t hold up when one considers that poorer countries, such as Libya and Zimbabwe, have more successfully raised literacy rates (Weiner 1991). While free public schools in India exist, many students drop out, or are “pushed out”. Explanations include: lack of practical education to raise future incomes, need for agile children as workers, lack of political will, poorly allocated school funding, outdated British texts, inability to buy school supplies, etc. (Weiner 1991). Rather than focus on these failures, I wanted to document, through video, reasons why the children of CCI are succeeding.
My relationship with Bhaskara had nothing and everything to do with my original purpose. Though he lived four hours from my film site, he taught me most directly the need for education, and the cyclical nature of poverty that traps so many kids. When he found me again I questioned,

“Where are your parents?”
“Only one man,” he responded, almost proudly patting his chest. He meant that he, a boy of twelve years, was alone. Though his use of “man” charmed me, it spoke to his prematurely adult condition.
“Any brothers or sisters?” I persisted.
“No . . . you are my sister.” Now I was hooked, and even more saddened. Either he subsisted in such neglect that I, a near stranger did feel familial, or he resorted to obsequious flattery in order to avoid starvation. I learned through rough translations that he sleeps at a bus and occasionally visits an aunt in another village. He had dropped out of the over-crowded government school long before, where students are beaten and many, even with supportive parents, remain illiterate. I bought him clothes, food and searched for a good residential school — without which he had no viable future. As it approached time for me to leave for filming, my search had only led to frustrating dead-ends. Many strangers offered to take my money with their guarantee of educating the boy, but legitimate residential schools would not take an illiterate twelve-year old.
“I, you, Bangalore going?” he suggested, pointing at him and me, when I told him I was leaving to go to the city the next day. It shocked me that he would leave his village to enter an unknown city with a totally foreign language — he speaks Telegu while the people of Bangalore, in Karnataka, speak Kannada. I knew that many kids who move to cities are further trapped and often exploited as virtual slaves. I thought about bringing him to the CCI office, but without better translators I couldn’t be sure of his familial situation.
“No, just me, but I’ll be back in 10 days, okay?”
I headed to the Child Care India headquarters to film. I stayed at a priest’s guesthouse, and my amicable guide, Guru “David” Prasad drove me around on his motorcycle. I tried to capture CCI’s four-pronged approach to educational support: preschools, evening tutorials, school enrollment and character development. We saw remote village preschools, where kids studied in stone huts as their parents hauled rocks in quarries. I filmed cultural programs of impoverished children in beautiful pink gowns dancing to pop tunes. Children showed me their artwork, and spoke in five languages. I also wanted to give these kids a chance to articulate their struggle for education, and discover familial and societal motivations. I interviewed Latha, for example, who supports her sickly mother while studying for her MBA. She told me, “My mother motivated us, even when we had not even one square meal per day, she used to tell, ‘Food is not that important, but education is most important in our lives.’”
Generally people took a casual to enthusiastic interest to my camera and project. The young boys especially loved hamming it up – mesmerized as I replayed them dancing and laughing across my screen. During interviews, my lapel mic only added an annoying hum and made the participants nervous at the seeming formality. The boom mic never worked unless I waved through the air and then it alternated with a loud screech. Nearby construction contributed the jarring sounds of crashing rocks to my interviews. Rather than get discouraged, I decided to show the realities: loud, obscure and with thick accents. This is not, after all a tourist film.
More false starts awaited Bhaskara when I returned to his village. One promising orphanage dismissed him because of his age, and another agreed to take him, only to later retract explaining that they are a girls-only school. As my departure date drew near, panic and guilt overtook me when I saw Bhaskara. My innocent friend happily followed me around, licking ice-cream, blissfully unaware of his seemingly dismal future. Slight consolation came when a trusted friend who lives in Bangalore said he would continue the search, though he had never met Bhaskara. He found a solution, but has been unable to locate Bhaskara. I’ve sent his picture with friends who are going to India soon, with instructions on who to contact if they find him. That education — a right apparently guaranteed to all, and yet denied to so many– should be this difficult to achieve, alternately discourages and motivates me.
I ended up with 11 hours of footage, which I’m busy editing in the Center for Multimedia Development. A preview of my film was shown at the Roxy, when Gates Gooding, a previous URECA recipient, showed his film about Bosnian youth. My film, tentatively titled, Jeevodaya, Hope through Education will be shown in CC theatre on Nov. 15th at 7:30– please come, please enjoy, please donate a few dollars to help kids attain what many of us take for granted—education.

Tags: documentary, India, kids, school

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