meeting renuka
My mother called me in late November of 2018. I was walking down to a little French place for dinner from work, and I had some time to kill before my friends arrived, so I picked up. She had an interesting story to share.
About a year before this phone call, I had read about an organization working to educate girls in a rural part of northern India and had forwarded the article to my mother. I had then promptly forgotten about it. She was reading her grad school alumni magazine (because apparently, this is something my mother does) and found a profile about the founder of this organization, who had gone to the same grad school. She decided to reach out to the organization on Facebook to learn more, and lo and behold, they responded. Now, she told me, she wanted to go see this school. Did I want to come?
I had just started a new job - just that month. However, one of the perks that came with the job was volunteer time off (VTO). I knew I wouldn’t be able to take more than a week off with my accrued PTO for the timeline my mother was eyeing, but then I remembered the week of VTO. It was a long shot, I thought. What boss would let their employee take two weeks off three months into a new job? Could I even use my VTO in another country?
Somehow, it all worked out. The company signed off on the VTO, my boss signed off on my PTO, and suddenly, my mother and I were off to India for the first two weeks of February.
We settled into Delhi for a few days to adjust to the time difference and catch up with family before heading to Anupshahr, where this organization had a school. We had connected with the staff here, and it happened to be that a few people from the organization, including the CEO, were themselves headed from Delhi to Anupshahr, so we would be carpooling on the way there. It was for the best, as it was a long drive - about five hours.
Anupshahr is located in Uttar Pradesh, one of the states next to Delhi. The county is very rural, largely made up of farmland. I had never been anywhere like this in India before. We had family that lived in rural areas, and had visited them when I was younger, but this was far more rural than that. Our drive turned to gravel roads about three hours in; that was, in part, why it was such a long drive.
On this drive I had the opportunity to meet Renuka. She was the CEO of Pardada Pardadi Education Society (PPES). She insisted I ride with her on the way to Anupshahr. She spoke to me openly about what she was trying to do for her girls (she always called them her girls, even though there were over 1,000 of them), about the political climate in India, about the pilot programs she wanted to launch. I was pleasantly surprised; the older women I met in India were usually hung up on my unmarried status. There was little else of interest about me to them. But Renuka had no desire to speak about that; I don’t think she even asked, during that first conversation. I look back now and wonder why I was surprised, considering the organization she was running. She was an incredibly progressive woman in a country I rarely considered progressive, solely based on my own experiences.
Being in Anupshahr for five days was one of the most valuable and thought-provoking experiences I’ve had to date. The school provides K-12 education to girls below the poverty line. Uniforms, books, meals, and daily transportation are provided. After sixth class (sixth grade, in the U.S.), parents are given a stipend to ensure that their daughter still attends school, rather than taking the route of marrying her early. The girls are encouraged to explore college or employment after they graduate, and many now support their families. There is another program run by PPES that also provides opportunities to the women in this area to earn money and become financially independent.
I was familiar with big non-profits in the U.S. - Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, a few others - but I had never seen one that so holistically tackled a problem. Renuka was not just educating these girls; she was opening a whole set of opportunities to them. She was always thinking about how to grow the program and how to make it better. I have a picture from our first day there of a whiteboard in the principal’s office. It was a list of projects they still needed funding for; everything from transportation to new buildings to eco-friendly energy schemes. Even as Renuka walked us around the school, she spoke of all the things she wanted to do, not just what was already there. And what was already there was impressive.
I had an assortment of assignments, since I was only there for a week and not a few months. I helped with English class for middle-school girls; I talked to some of the older girls about working and living away from home; I taught an English nursery rhyme to the kindergartners. I also shared some Excel skills with the staff. The girls at the school were intrigued by me; it seems that they generally had non-Indian volunteers, so I was an anomaly. When they discovered I could speak Hindi, they poked and prodded until I gave in, slightly embarrassed by my accent. They kept calling me ma’am until I insisted they call me ‘Didi’ - older sister, in Hindi, and still a term of respect that didn’t make me feel like an auntie.
It made me think about the Indian diaspora and what we are taught here, that these girls never saw Indian-American volunteers like me. In the circle of Indian people that I know, very few have gone back to spend any significant time in India, or give back in any way beyond monetarily. My sample set could be an anomaly, of course - but I also look at myself, and I am guilty of it too. This was a large step outside of my comfort zone, but I was bolstered by my family who was there with me, the wonderful people working at PPES, and the enthusiasm and friendliness of the girls.
Anupshahr has endless fields of mustard flowers, a bright yellow that I had only seen in Bollywood movies. I wanted to run through them like the heroines in my childhood favorites, my dupatta twisting in the breeze behind me. Since I was with my mother and my aunt and uncle, we had the privilege of staying at a house a short ways away from the school campus. Even that was something out of the old movies; it was crumbling but elegant, with an outdoor terrace on the second floor and big, drafty rooms inside. February in Delhi and U.P. may seem like springtime here, but it still gets chilly at night, and no one has central heat. We would sit around a large fire outside in the evenings, wrapped up in shawls, making conversation with Renuka and some of the neighbors and other staff members. I had the opportunity to try regional dishes I had never seen or heard of before; I was stuffed to the brim every night. No one begrudged me a glass of wine (in fact, it was offered) - something so unusual for me in India that I first declined, and then only accepted when everyone urged me to have one. It didn’t feel like the India I knew and yet, it still looked familiar.
I wonder if one of the reasons Renuka made such an impression on me is because she treated me like an equal in a place where I was perpetually a child, regardless of my age. I was never alone or independent in India, which was quite unlike the rest of my life. My parents were never comfortable with it, even after I had been to college and started living in one of the largest cities in the world. My cousins were protective of me when we went out as well; one would always stop me from speaking when she was haggling because the price would go up as soon as they heard my ‘Amreekan’ accent. Even the way I held myself seemed to identify me as other, regardless of what I was wearing. I could never really blend in.
My mother got sick during our visit to Anupshahr and had to leave early, as healthcare was not readily available there. She did not want to leave me behind; she was apprehensive, and to a certain extent, so was I. My aunt and uncle were going with my mother, so I would be on my own with these lovely people we had only met two days ago. In some ways, it was the best thing that could have happened. It forced me to step further out of my comfort zone, to make conversation with the other people who were there. Some other women working at the organization joined us for dinner on Friday and I still remember the feeling of being among my peers - one I don’t expect to feel when I visit India.
This experience has since encouraged me to learn more about Indian politics, to better understand what was happening in this country that was so close to my heart but too often far from my mind. I may not have been born in India, but it was - it is - still a large part of me. I often wonder how much my experiences in India shaped me as an adult. Do I enjoy long hot showers so much because of all of the bucket baths I took as a child (and even sometimes as an adult)? Is it sometimes easier to turn a blind eye to the poverty here because it is not so glaring as the poverty of India?
I have thought so often about that trip, and the impression PPES and Renuka left on me. I was supposed to write a blog post about my experience right after I had returned, but I was struggling then to write, and it never happened. I stayed connected with Renuka, though - she would reach out occasionally to check on me, or to ask for help or advice on a project, based on the skill set I had shared when I was with them. I felt honored that she remembered my name and asked for my help since she met so many people every day. We even had dinner here in New York once, when she was visiting. What I remember about that night most clearly is that after dinner, I insisted on treating her to dessert, and we walked to Van Leeuwen to get some ice cream. Her face lit up when they handed us our scoops, almost like a child’s. Perhaps it’s easier to retain some sense of childlike joy when you are around them so much. But she truly had something in her that I rarely see in other people - a capacity for hope that translated into real impact.
The last time I spoke to her was two months ago. I had been helping out with a project, and she wanted to chat on the phone about it. She had been a little skeptical of some of the changes I was proposing, but as we talked through them she seemed to become more comfortable. We planned to reconnect after she heard back from another partner. I was excited to be working on the project; it was an opportunity to bring new, young donors into their donor base, and I loved the idea that I might have so much as a fraction of an impact on helping PPES.
Renuka passed away last week, another casualty of the COVID crisis raging in India right now. She was younger than my own mother, in her mid-fifties. I still can’t really believe it. I am so saddened by the thought that we won’t speak again, that I won’t have the opportunity to go back and visit her and her girls and play Holi with them, as we had discussed. And yet I’m sure my grief pales in comparison to her family’s and of course, her girls. She truly inspired me; she was a woman in a place and time that didn’t make room for women like her, smart and independent and driven, and she forged a path ahead anyway. And she did so much good. I think we all aspire to do some good in our lives, but I don’t know anyone whose effect I could measure so tangibly. It makes me want to do better.
A $500 donation to PPES will support one girl’s education for a whole year. They also have a COVID relief fund for Anupshahr. You can find more information about the organization, Renuka, and how to donate at pardadapardadi.org.
