The Avanigadda Public Hearing

Take this as a scene: the cook and housemaid at the PSVS compound - the gorgeously exuberant, wide-eyed lady who tutors me in chappati, dahl, and dosa, and breaks up the long days with 'coffee Joey' - is stood on a brightly-lit stage, in front of 500 people, in floods of furious tears.

Despite the Telugu, I knew the outline of the story she was relating to the audience of the Town Hall; it had been recorded weeks before this day, translated, and given to me and Wilf to prepare for publication. The story relates her own experience of unthinkable loss, abuse, confinement and violence, at the hands of previous husbands. She is one of 25 women who gave their testimonies on the 29th of October at the Krishna District Court of Women's first public hearing in Avanigadda.


After days of laborious, repetitive work and frazzled nerves, with the last folders folded, and all documentation a-ready, the court finally commenced. The expert witnesses, consisting of academics and delegates from women's rights NGOs whose function was to 'make sense of' and 'contextualise' the violence, took their places on the stage. The audience of testifiers, other NGO and women's group members, volunteers, politicians, students, lawyers, locals, and other interested folk, watched on.

Thus the day unfolded, predictably chaotic, mostly incomprehensible to my English ears but, thankfully, a success. The testimonies were given despite power cuts and an audience whose levels of respect wavered throughout. And with all the tears and the hitches, each of the women who spoke did so with dignity, purpose and confidence, finally giving a voice to the violence which has become endemic behind the closed doors of homes in Andhra Pradesh.

'There's nothing like this in the district - or even in any district here' said Jose, a campaigner and staff member who has dedicated his life to promoting rights and education to the vulnerable, particularly the tribal communities of India.

As far as I'm concerned, this says it all. In a country that is bursting at the seams with NGOs, which holds perfectly decent women's rights legislation, there are still no forums where women can simply stand up and express the crimes committed against them. There are so many reasons for this, from cultural and social biases to insane levels of corruption, which prevent the mainstream courts, police, and political and welfare institutions from providing a fair platform for women.

What a triumph that, for one day, the court of women provided such a space.

Picture book diary

All I ever seem to do is write. Posters, brochures, manifestos on women's human rights, all of them so flowery they leave you bouquet-heady with the delights of Indian idioms.

Here are some pictures to speak some words:


The view from the Charminar in Hyderabad - the busiest city I have ever set my sandal in. A truly wonderful, disorientating place.


Finishing my book on the train back to Vijayawada. We stood in the open doorway for the last hour as the train pulled in, racing across the vast moonlit river from Gunter district.


Only hanging out in a private members club with some friends - yes, I said friends. So what if they're just the guys that fix my laptop?


The beach at Machilipatnam - less swimming, more speeding in a motorbike/autorickaw with your entire extended family on board. Still, I dipped in the sea and swam in all of my clothes, appearing, as far as the reaction of other beach-goers tells me, like a ginger sea monster.

Work and more work

As the first Court of Women public hearing looms ever closer, the work load weighs heavier. The public hearing will take place Avanigadda at the end of October. Women from this part of the district who have survived extreme violence at the hands of family members will offer their testimonies to the court, trying to lift the shroud of silence on the issue and, maybe, gain some redress, who knows. Expert witnesses will give speeches, trying to make sense of the violence from a variety of perspectives: political, social, legal, medical, and so on.

I spent last week working almost day and night far away from home in Avanigadda, with poor Wilf stranded back in Gannavaram. The work ethic in the PSVS compound was terrific: up at 6am, on to work until a thick mist of sleep clouds your eyes with lots of snacks and coffees punctuating the day. For me it meant 10/11pm, for others it meant the early hours of the morning. I was fund raising anxiously, a desperate bid to cover a budget that is inflating by the hour.

Our week ended (on Saturday of course, never Friday) at All India Radio with Theresa giving an impassioned speech on women's rights (or she could have been talking about her penchant for kittens for all I know, the Telugu gap widens by the day). Then on to a Global Forum for Women event in a very grand hall with chandeliers hanging spledidly and inappropriately, whilst the committee - all male of course - championed the cause of women's human rights (or talked about kittens?). Apparently these guys are supposed to 'sensitise' the government to 'women's issues'; the reality, it seems, is that they take funding from other NGOs and enjoy a lot of expensive, elaborate events. Bah.

This week my work-base was closer to home, just a bus hop (an Indian hop, not an English one), to Vijayawada, in a complex of NGOs dedicated to enforcing child rights. Everyone is madly gathering the testimonies, throwing them recklessly around in a ping pong of Telugu and English, with edits and re-edits forming tangled knots all over the shop.

Wilf's off from school for a week - I'm setting down the laptop and heading to Amaravathi to be a tourist again.