Virginia Woolf in Sangrur: A Stitching Center of One’s Own for Impoverished Farm Women

[niyad]

Virginia Woolf in Sangrur: A Stitching Center of One’s Own for Impoverished Farm Women





Expounding on “women and fiction” (and indeed the several fictions about women), Virginia Woolf’s brilliant long essay, A Room of One’s Own, was first published in 1929. Woolf underscored the dependence of literary genius on freedom of thought; of freedom of thought on the free availability of space; and of space on financial freedom that buys time and space—for the body, heart and head. Said Woolf, while noting the many obstacles in women’s path to succeed as thinkers and writers and change-makers,

In the first place, to have a room of her own, let alone a quiet room or a sound-proof room, was out of the question.

Recently, the village of Chural Kalan in the Sangrur District of the state of Punjab, India, saw 20 women beginning to feel the freedom of a room of their own. Albeit shared, and in fact not even theirs, this is a room of possibilities.
The promised room is in the courtyard of the village gurudwara (a congregation space for Sikhs), marked by a nondescript board on top of the modest doorway. The lettering is small, and as one walks up to read it, one can’t help notice that the 10 pairs of sandals outside are quite worn. Making your acquaintance, the board informs: “Stitching Center, Bridge Builders (India), Kabliji Memorial Trust, New Delhi.”

Inside, there are more sandals neatly along the wall—it was raining when the owners of these first rushed in this morning, the women explain with a smile. “Open between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., the Center time is just after all the household chores are done,” the stitching instructor says. “Or temporarily dodged,” interrupts one of the students, and the room resounds with soft laughter before the women return to their quiet needlework.
Enjoying a quiet space to herself is often an impossibility for any woman—even more so when her home is ravaged with poverty. The plight of farmers in India was cruelly again a subject of political volleyball during this past Indian election season: Facing the threat of heightened farmers’ union protests, the Punjab government declared yet another suicide survey in March 2014. Yes, the poverty in the farming community in parts of Punjab too often has led to suicide. The extent of the problem has been known to be pervasive since the 1990s, with the Punjab government first announcing allocations for compensation to families of suicide victims in 2001 (though it dithered on actual payments for the next decade). Currently, another expert commission is considering compensation plans and debt conciliation boards, while the Punjabi farming community holds on tenuously to some hope that some of these recommendations will in fact be implemented.

Recognizing that relief for families of farmers who commit suicide is deathly slow to come—even as cases of multiple family members committing suicide due to mounting debt continue to come to light—and nothing that even when compensatory relief is provided it does not empower women—the Delhi-based NGO Building Bridges India set up the stitching centers in partnership with Punjab’s capital Chandigarh-based NGO Baba Nanak Education Society.

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http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/08/20/virginia-woolf-in-sangrur-a-stitching-center-of-ones-own-for-impoverished-farm-women/