| Poetry |
| ............... | My
dear Sisters,
Oh! I would love
to share my dreams with you
We shall help build
our capacities and get well trained
Our own identities
and status we were hardly aware of
We accepted that
our lives were meant more for others
Having stepped out
of our homes we have now shed our fears
Work hard, we will
still, but for business purposes as well
And become self-reliant
as we can now earn for ourselves
How they fleeced
us with exorbitant interest rates
There’s no dearth
of opportunities with our well-wishers providing
Added to this is
our own group-strength we should mobilize
Hitherto we lay
hidden behind our purdahs* and doors
To remain status
quo we now have no reason
With such a clear
mind we shall march ahead
. -- Vaidehi Krishnan |
| Translation created by Vaidehi Krishnan in the process of capturing the expression of the heart of a highly motivated woman trainee, ‘would-be-entrepreneur’ rural woman/ group leader in a micro- enterprise management training program at a village in Orrissa, India, in December, 2001. This poem was created extempore, in the training room, in the local dialect “Oriya” by this rural woman who intended getting across her feelings to her counterparts back home in her village who according to her were not so privileged to attend this program. |
| Interestingly, Vaidehi happened to mistake this woman’s poem, which ran into many pages, to be notes on business concepts delivered at the training room, and curiosity got the better of her, which then led into an inquiry that revealed this fact. Taking this situation as a challenge, she got the same interpreted into ‘Hindi,’ the national language, and subsequently translated it into English, retaining the poetic form |
| Poetry |
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