Katie Revell\’s India Blog

 I’ve really been enjoying the teaching lately. Most of the lessons have been great - smooth-running, fun and (I hope) useful - and even the less successful ones have been far from disasterous! I guess at this stage in the year I’m just a lot more experienced and have a much better idea of what does and doesn’t work. I’ve realised that I can do this teaching thing. It also helps that this time we’ve met the new students afresh, whereas last year we arrived, out of the blue, well into the academic year and were introduced to the students as “friends” or “cultural exchange students” (no-one really had a clue why we where there). My new classes seem to respect me a lot more as a teacher. This isn’t to say I’m not friendly with them: on the contrary, and I’m realising how much I’m actually going to miss the girls. Despite what I said in my last post about feeling more affinity with the more Westernised girls, I actually find myself spending more time talking to the girls from the South. While the Northern girls are more savvy about the West and its ways, the locals are incessantly curious about myself, my country, and my culture, and their naivity is both endearing and frustrating. To many of them, “the UK” is simply a vague idea, with no geographical meaning. I doubt many of them could identify the different continents on a world map or would even consider themselves part of a thing called “Asia”. It amazes me that someone can have an intimate knowledge of botany or computing yet not know the difference between America and Europe.

Last night, the conversation turned to dowry, which, despite its theoretical illegality, is still the overwhelming norm. The pressure to marry off one’s daughters - which is still regarded as a necessity for security, financial at least - is so great that parents end up scraping together hundreds of thousands of Rupees (or fridges, scooters, TVs - whatever is demanded) to send with their daughters to the new in-laws. The stories - and the fact that they involve people whom I know - enrage and sadden me. Cultural sensitivity aside, dowry is one thing I don’t think can be justified. I’ve seen that arranged marriage (as distinct from forced marriage), despite my personal aversion, needn’t be an objectively bad thing; it can work. But the thought of my parents feeling that they have to pay someone to marry me is just offensive. In the context of the culture here, it’s also dangerous - there are stories almost daily in the papers about new brides found mysteriously burnt to death in kitchen fires or driven to suicide by dowry demands or abuse because of “insufficient” dowry. When this is considered along with the assertion by many people that marriage in India is more successful because it is based on mutual respect, rather than the volatility of love, it really gets the blood boiling. I’ve discussed these things with some of the girls, and while they all agree in principle, they clearly think such talk is the stuff of naivity and idealism on my part - no-one seems to think there’s anything they can do about it.