A day ago when Swarna ma'am reminded me to write the opening post as campaign associate, and I put it on my list for things to do once I got home as usual. But when I opened the blog up to write, I experienced this sense of euphoria: because for once, after years of purely academic writing, legal writing, purely non-experience related writing; I was finally at a place where I could write about what I was doing, and what I was excited about! I stared back at my laptop for a few minutes because I needed that time to get into the writing personally-mode.
I use the word personally because working with Prajnya has also become personal, in a sense to me. Just two days back I experienced this sense of outrage when I thought that someone had tried to co-opt a certain event (all misunderstandings cleared) that we had meticulously planned and were almost ready to execute: such so much that I realized that I was so involved with work, I didn't stop to think that perhaps I was feeling extremely over-protective of the campaign and of Prajnya's work! It made me laugh a little in my head - mainly because I remembered going for a workshop a year ago on emotional intelligence, where the facilitator told us that the one take-away from the day should be, never let your professional life affect your personal life, and always separate your emotions from your work. While at the time I thought that was sound advice; working with Prajnya, somehow I feel that I have learnt to appreciate the emotions and accept the ones that come along with planning this campaign.
One thing I have noticed, however, is that sometimes while one is in constant touch with something, its intensity and significance is greatly diluted in their heads. I was telling a friend about the campaign and how it works, and she was so awed by it, and was so happy that the campaign initiates dialogue on such a large scale, she proceeded to tell all her friends in Madras about it. For a moment I was shocked; because working with it, I suppose I had somewhat gotten used to the idea in my head, but when I actually sat down and thought about it: the reality of it hit me. The idea that while people have been debating and arguing about so many things online; Prajnya has been doing this for 8 years offline, going on-ground, changing norms, breaking stereotypes - and to think of the number of people who have been educated because of this, and the number of people that soon will be - the mind boggles. I am almost ashamed that I normalized this in my head - I remain constantly amazed by the work Prajnya does, and will do; and with this I hope the 2017 campaign continues to do this - educate, raise awareness, initiate change. When I first interviewed for the job I was almost sure I would not get it; I don't have a Master's degree, I was afraid that I came off as a little too immature for a job like this, and perhaps in some part of my head I did think that I might be, too young to handle something that initiates such large-scale awareness in Madras. Now that I'm here, I can't believe we are almost ready to release the calendar and more than that, I can't believe I ever got used to the idea. Writing this post brings back all the anticipation, excitement and astonishment: we're here, we're ready and we're good to go.
Moving surprisingly ahead of time, we broke for lunch where we were able to find a more informal setting to interact. After a light lunch, we set our groups down again to discuss about points and agendas which can apply to women workers across sectors, from which would evolve a solidarity manifesto which can be taken forward. The three groups came up with a wide variety of important issues, including but not limited to: sanitation and hygiene at the workplace, working and clean bathrooms, exploitation across sectors, sexual harassment, union memberships, whether unions in corporate spheres are viable, mutual learning and benefits for domestic workers.
