Happy Women’s Day?

This morning I was sitting in Makdi Singray village for a discussion on tamarind collection and processing. Normal field day. After the meeting wrapped up, I got talking with Shrimani didi. Just casually, I asked her – “Didi, aapko pata hai aaj kya hai?” She smiled, almost like it was a slightly silly question, and said “Ha, Women’s Day hai. Status dekha tha.” And then, without any pause, she bent down, lifted a 50 kg sack of tamarind onto her shoulder, and walked towards her home. Just like that. Like it was nothing.

I stood there for a second. I couldn’t move. Not because of what she said, but because of what she did right after. That image – a woman lifting 50 kilos on her shoulder, on Women’s Day, going back to her home, her work, her life , it said more than any post or campaign ever could. And it forced me to ask a question I have been sitting with all day: who exactly told us that women are weak? Because in 9 months of being in Bastar, I have not seen a single piece of evidence that supports that.

Some of the strongest people I have ever met in my life  I met them here. In offices, in forests, in remote villages where the road ends and you walk the rest. Women carrying firewood every single day. Women working fields from before sunrise. Women sitting in gram sabhas and speaking with a clarity and conviction that puts most meeting rooms to shame. Not performing strength. Just living it, quietly, without waiting for anyone to notice or applaud.

So when people talk about women being weak – physically, emotionally , I think what they actually mean is that the system has worked very hard to make women feel weak. There is a difference. The weakness is not in them. It has been imposed on them. Through what they are told they cannot do, what spaces they are kept out of, what opportunities never reach them, what voices get talked over in rooms that make decisions about their own lives. That is not weakness. That is a system doing its job and doing it quietly enough that we start thinking it is natural.

This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls.” And of these three words, the one that stays with me is action. Rights and justice are the goal. But action is the only thing that actually moves us there. Action means showing up – in policy rooms, in village meetings, in schools, in our own homes and families  and making sure that every woman has a genuinely equal shot. Not equal in a theoretical sense. Equal in the real, ground-level, everyday sense. And that means we have to be honest about equity , about the fact that some people need more support, not the same support, to get to the same place.

And then there is my mummy. I say this with full honesty and zero exaggeration – I am here, doing what I am doing, because of her. She is the kind of woman who has a solution for every problem. Not because she has had an easy life. But because she decided, somewhere along the way, that she would not let hard situations make her hard. She taught me the value of hard work. She taught me what honesty looks like in practice. But the thing she taught me that I use the most  every single week in this work  is how to stay calm when everything around you is falling apart. That is not a small skill. That is the most important skill. And she modelled it so consistently that I absorbed it without even realising.

So today, on Women’s Day, I am not just celebrating a date or sharing a post. I am thinking about Shrimani didi walking home with 50 kilos on her shoulder. I am thinking about every woman I have met in Bastar who showed me what strength actually looks like when it is not performing for an audience. And I am thinking about my mummy, who taught me almost everything that matters. The least I can do , the least any of us can do  is make sure the world we are building actually has space for them. Not just on one day. Every day.

Happy Women’s Day….