Shabnam has seen it all: From life on streets to high society
MURSHIDABAD (West Bengal): From eking out a living on Kolkata's streets to working as an interior decorator, Shabnam Ramaswamy's life has been full of twists and turns.Born in a village in the interiors of West Bengal's Murshidabad, Shabnam, got to study in Kolkata's elite La Martinere School, thanks to her father's Army job. At 16, she was married off to a wealthy 32-year-old who would beat her to a pulp. After bearing him two kids, her husband would regularly throw her out of the house at night because he felt their son didn't look like him. One night, at 24, she left home with her son.
For two months, she lived in a shanty at Sealdah station after which she got herself a job and worked her way out of poverty. Within a decade, she succeeded in her job as an interior decorator, got a divorce and won custody of her children. But she began to tire of high-society life and trained her sights on social work. "I decided to leave Kolkata, as it was awkward going from businesswoman to social worker in the very same city,'' she said. She wrote down the names of six cities on chits of paper and asked her daughter to pick a chit. The girl picked Delhi, so that's where the family went. Shabnam joined Mira Nair's Salaam Balak, where she befriended runaways at Delhi station. A senior journalist, Jugnu Ramaswamy, approached her with the intention of making a film on her work. He not only made the film, but married her too. The Ramaswamys set up a school for street kids in Delhi, called Jagriti. After the school was demolished by the Delhi government, they headed to Katna in West Bengal, where they decided to set up a state-of-the-art school with the same name for rural kids. In 2005, just before the school began, Jugnu died of a heart attack, leaving Shabnam to run it single-handedly, a job she has done exceedingly well.
MURSHIDABAD (West Bengal): From eking out a living on Kolkata's streets to working as an interior decorator, Shabnam Ramaswamy's life has been full of twists and turns.
Born in a village in the interiors of West Bengal's Murshidabad, Shabnam, got to study in Kolkata's elite La Martinere School, thanks to her father's Army job. At 16, she was married off to a wealthy 32-year-old who would beat her to a pulp. After bearing him two kids, her husband would regularly throw her out of the house at night because he felt their son didn't look like him. One night, at 24, she left home with her son.
For two months, she lived in a shanty at Sealdah station after which she got herself a job and worked her way out of poverty. Within a decade, she succeeded in her job as an interior decorator, got a divorce and won custody of her children. But she began to tire of high-society life and trained her sights on social work. "I decided to leave Kolkata, as it was awkward going from businesswoman to social worker in the very same city,'' she said. She wrote down the names of six cities on chits of paper and asked her daughter to pick a chit. The girl picked Delhi, so that's where the family went. Shabnam joined Mira Nair's Salaam Balak, where she befriended runaways at Delhi station. A senior journalist, Jugnu Ramaswamy, approached her with the intention of making a film on her work. He not only made the film, but married her too. The Ramaswamys set up a school for street kids in Delhi, called Jagriti. After the school was demolished by the Delhi government, they headed to Katna in West Bengal, where they decided to set up a state-of-the-art school with the same name for rural kids. In 2005, just before the school began, Jugnu died of a heart attack, leaving Shabnam to run it single-handedly, a job she has done exceedingly well.
Amazing Indians. A B C of a Revolution
Introducing Shabnam Ramaswamy and Jagriti Public school
Amazing Indians, A, B, C of a Revolution
Good overview of other projects of www.streetsurvivorsindia.org
Durga's court, radio documentary of Radio Netherlands Worldwide,
about the mediation court of Shabnam Ramaswamy
In a small village called Katna in West Bengal, India, Shabnam Ramaswamy runs a court. She's the judge, the jury and the investigating magistrate. The supplicants stream in day and night.
The first knock on the door often starts at five or six am and the flow doesn't stop till late at night when the judge is exhausted, hoarse from having to out-shout the arguing parties and has barely enough energy to eat a late meal and throw herself in bed only for it all to start again at dawn the next day. All this despite the fact that the judge has not a whit of formal legal training and neither she, nor the law clerk who does the paperwork, are paid for their time.
Forum for the poor
Shabnam Ramaswamy is asked to rule on cases that can range from demands for compensation for ruined crops or the return of dowries given for later rejected wives, to rape, child snatching and murder. The people come to her because she is their last resort. India is famous for its sluggish judiciary; court cases on average take ten years to be heard and even then it is notoriously easy for those with money to make the cases go their way.
Shabnam's Court - the name she has given it is Stree Shakti or Women's Power - is a forum for the poor, the disenfranchised, the illiterate; those who have neither the money nor the influence to grease the wheels of the official system of justice in the country.
"I become Durga," she says with a mischievous grin, referring to one of the most powerful deities of the Hindu pantheon - the goddess of vengeance. "And I tell these men that I am like Durga with her ten hands. In one hand I have a stick to beat them, in another a law book, in another a flower and so on…this is the language they understand."
Tempers flare
When Shabnam summons two parties to a dispute, each party usually comes with a supporting posse of people who all want to voice their opinions. One party to speaks first, then the other is allowed to rebut, but it's not long before tempers are released from already short leashes. The rice paddies around the house ricochet with the shouts of up to 30 people and there's much finger pointing and tugging of didi's elbow to get her attention for a particular argument. She lets them shout it out for a bit, even going every now and then to attend to some matter in the house or answer her persistent mobile.
Sometimes in the middle of an argument that looks like it's one insult away from blows, she will calmly hand out orders and tasks to the band of helpers she has working with her, or ask the cleaning woman not to forget to change the bedcovers in the guest room, all the while seemingly oblivious to the surreal backdrop of shouting, tears and accusations. This is surely one of the more unusual courts of law operating in the world today.
The didi factor
Nowadays, Katna is a more peaceful place than it used to be. A group of village elders explain that only since didi came here has it become safe to walk outside the village after dark, that although men are still beating their wives occasionally, they now "think a thousand times" before they do it because they know that "someone is watching them". Jeleba Bibi, one of the village wives agreed, saying that domestic violence has noticeably declined because even the toughest man in the village is afraid that his wife will threaten to go todidi.
The exact secret of her power remains a mystery. Once, in an attempt to help share the load, her husband tried hear out a couple of the cases. He was a fair man, revered almost to the point of deity in the village. But people soon stopped coming to him. "We'll wait for didi," they said simply.
He didn't have Shabnam's special alchemy that makes people not only trust her rulings, but understand the process by which she makes them. To them, she is indeed Durga, who vanquished evil and had the power to make all bow before her.
Durga’s Court was produced by Dheera Sujan. The documentary was originally broadcast in September 2006 and was awarded a Bronze Medal by the United Nations at the New York Festivals.
