Gender

4 min read Just a month back, before the second wave of COVID-19 reared its ugly head in India, on my first field visit in a year to a small village in Uttar Pradesh, a young girl of 16 was narrating how the lockdown affected all of them in some ways. Rabia (name changed) was saying how her brother, the eldest male member of her family, would beat her, sometimes brutally, at any pretext almost every day during the lockdown. And how her mother would not say a word to the patriarchal family head. It was only when Rabia got her courage up, remembered her lessons from her Taaron ki Toli classes and went and spoke to the village head who came and spoke to the brother, that the ordeal finally stopped.