the silent revolution

working on the ground in the dry blistering summer heat of Rajasthan is no joke at all. I was there this summer, down from Delhi, working with women laborers who toiled day in and day out here. I had decided that at twenty i needed to understand how the majority of my country folk live, work and suffer. Through this understanding i hoped to know how i could fit into the larger development and upliftment of the many trodden upon by the few who enjoyed all the wealth.
i spent the summer working with the strongest women alive today. Women who changed the world for me, forever. The work as labor involves digging at the hard rocky earth to make water channels or roads. we did this for days. Some of the women were into their eighties, others had hardly entered their teens. Driven by thier own and their families hunger, they toiled.
Working with them, talking with them and fighting for wages from the corrupt state officials, i understood the ground realities of struggle, of suffering. I understood the courage it involves to stand up for your life, with so little backing you apart from your collective strength. This power, that the women have here, and that i now share with them while we work together to fight for their rights, for the labor laws to be followed, is what true heroism is made of.
Five years back there was no law in India guaranteeing employment for all willing to work. Then these women collected themselves, and with other social activists fought for such a law. They tell me stories of the struggle. How little by little the tables were turned and the law was framed then passed.
Today they have work. Eating with them, Their simple food, and sleeping in their bare plain mud huts, laughing with them and singing folk songs late into the starry nights i realized that even in silence and simplicity revolution can happen, that these unknown heroins are my country's living martyrs. Now together we find creative ways of moving into a better future, the struggle never ends, but the few laughs that we can share together make it possible to carry on.