The Courts of Women

Our first day at MJM college, set up by PSVS for school dropouts – ex-child labourers and the like. Not, shall we say, an underwhelming welcome. Posters, banners, intricate chalk drawings on EVERY blackboard, beaming off the floor and steps. ‘Welcome Zoe and Wilf’ adorns each nook, each cranny, until I’m sweating with expectant eyes.

‘I’m not supposed to be teaching – I’m working for PSVS, WIlf is teaching.’ They don’t quite understand me. Still, I have helped just a touch in the classroom and they are starting to get used to me sat typing in Principal Rau’s office.

So far my work has been on the Vijayawada Court of Women which is happening in one month. Courts of Women were started 20 years ago by the Asian Women’s Human Right’s Council on all sorts of topics: war, HIV, sex trafficking, globalization. They offer a space for women who have suffered violence and discrimination to give testimonies, to be listened to, in front of an audience, expert witnesses and a jury. The idea is to allow suffering to be voiced and addressed, in places where cultures, authorities, and justice systems tend to silence women.

I have been editing victims’ testimonies which read like catalogues of extraordinary violence. The dowry is the root of so much of it; women are locked into a system which treats them as commodities, where husbands are free to be as abusive as they please in the knowledge that society will support the man and never the woman. They can beat their wives, abuse them, rape them, set them alight, force abortions, and most of the time the police will condone it, no prosecution will follow because of prejudice or bribery. Wives don’t leave because losing honour is a worse fate than death.

There is so much preparation going in to the court. Last week the survivors participated in playback theatre, relating their experiences to a group of actors who then played it back to the audience. An odd idea, and perhaps the scenes in question are too sensitive to leave in the hands of drama? We have also been making power points showing videos of previous courts to present to girls schools and women's groups. More to come.

First hop over the vada

We have done Cochin, the Indian-Chinese-Portuguese hotchpotch with winding streets, all dosa and banana. Fishing nets, Jew Town spice market, Dutch Palace, Ernakulum ferry and mad techno hubbub – done. Rahool from the fort (‘don’t feel sorry for the Mumbai slummers they all have cable’) and Mr Benson who ran the home stay, who sang Hindi movie songs with his friends and the other English traveller (Foo Fighters: the Bollywood years), and old Ignatius Benson who took to kissing Wilf’s stomach – farewell.

Two weeks have passed since the 18 hour chug to Vijayawada, sweaty on the sleeper. She took us to buy pots and pans and sped us maniacally through the Krishna District.

First stop was our flat in Gannavaram: three rooms, ants and lizards galore, no shower, but a ceiling fan which can soothe all calamities. Home sweet home.

Next stop, the PSVS compound in Atkur, two hours away (Theresa’s home). This place is all chipmunks and fruit trees, frilling the house, the offices, the outside meeting space which sits like a band stand ready for performance. Durga cooks and we chat with Theresa, and other activists who stop by, about dowry, female degradation, child marriage, child labour, domestic violence, police corruption and on it blows; the struggle is her life blood. She laughs, however, at any opportunity, particularly where translation is concerned: 'Have you ever seen a man-go up a coconut tree?', and so on.

Then two days in Visanapeta, compound number two, the HQ three hours away. Smiling Lakshmi feeding us as we hide from the monsoon and Theresa leaves to hunt down a child who is being forced into marriage that night. Mission accomplished, she is found and sent to school.