Telling Young Lives: Portraits of Global Youth

2. Saka: Growing Up in the Indian Himalayas

Jane Dyson 2 Saka Growing Up in the Indian Himalayas I first met Saka on a cold winter’s evening in 2003 inside her family’s one-room house. The room was dark; Saka’s face was only occasionally visible by the light of the flickering cooking fire. Behind her, I could hear, but not see, the livestock that also shared the room, the two cows, two bulls, and a buffalo that quietly shuffled and snorted as they chewed on their nighttime hay. Although the sun had long since set, it was considerably lighter outside. The snow of the surrounding Himalayan peaks re- flected the light of the moon so that the forests on the nearby ridges were marked out in clear silhouette. I had just arrived in Bemni village for the first time.1 I had made the long trek up to the village with Saka’s paternal uncle, and had subsequently been invited to stay the night with Saka’s family. My arrival that night had brought the key male figures of the village to Saka’s house. The Sarpanch, the head of the village forest committee, and the de facto leader of the village , had entered the room. Despite explaining that I wanted to work with the young people in the village, he sought to lay claim over me immediately , and loudly discussed my schedule for the next day with the assembled group of men. Sixteen-year-old Saka had no place in these discussions. She quietly continued making flat bread (roti) for our supper, slapping the bread from hand to hand before placing it by the fire to cook. But as the men talked, we stole smiles and glances. Early the next morning, before the men had even emerged from their houses, Saka announced that I would accompany her and her friends for a day’s work in the forest. We 16 Chapter 2 made no mention of the Sarpanch’s instructions the night before. In the growing light of that chill January day, we set off for the high reaches of the forest. It was there that I discovered a very different Saka. Saka’s home, in the village of Bemni, is situated in Chamoli District, in the far north of the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, in north India. It is located some 40 km from the main road including a four-hour steep uphill walk to an altitude of 2,500 m (8,200 feet). It was a large village relative to others in Chamoli District with 188 households, of which two-thirds were higher-caste Rajputs, often termed General Caste, and one-third Dalits (lower castes, also called Scheduled Castes). Saka is from a Rajput family. She is the youngest of four children, and the only one remaining in the natal home. Her oldest brother, Vinod, had left Bemni in 1999 in search of salaried work, and in 2003 he lived in Delhi. Saka’s sister was married into a nearby village and, in 2003, her younger brother stayed often with their uncle while he sought a position in the army. Saka had studied at the middle school in the neighboring village, but had dropped out in 2002 after having passed her Class Eight exams. Now FIG 2.1 Saka (Photograph by Jane Dyson) Saka 17 she joined her parents working their 0.8 ha of land, a relatively large holding by Bemni standards. The details of Saka’s family situation point to broader aspects of social change in this part of the Himalayas. Chamoli District is an area undergoing rapid transformation. The expansion of the road network has led to the development of local markets and promoted the adoption of new cash crops. At the same time, improved access to urban centers has encouraged rural men to migrate to cities in pursuit of service employment. In the early 2000s, households were beginning to depend more heavily on cash remittances. These changes were also bound up with a sharp increase in rural people’s investment in formal education: literacy rates in Chamoli District rose from 27.6 percent in 1971 to 61.1 percent in 1991, according to the Census of India. Nevertheless, there remains a dearth of rural schools, particularly in the more remote areas where roads do not yet reach. As such, the majority of the population is still prevented from obtaining a secondary school education. Moreover, the...