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JAGORI Notebooks

JAGORI Notebook 2010 – Tab Se Aab Tak

It gives us great happiness to share with you all that Jagori has completed 25 years! During this journey we have become an integral part of the women’s movement and for more than two decades we have fought for and celebrated the gains made for the rights of women. The Jagori Notebook has played an important part by being a mirror of these struggles; it has reflected our feminist practices and politics and spelled out our bold and strong initiatives. Through our Notebooks we have touched areas that were unseen and unexplored – We used colors, images, pictures and writings to expose these. Women from rural as well as urban areas and towns have been given their voice and the Notebook has been an important medium for carrying their views.

Presenting twenty-five years of this priceless history is our attempt for this year’s Notebook. Even today, when we gather together during conferences, protests and rallies, we recall the creative ways of expressing issues that were complex, serious, complicated and requiring great empathy. We gave thought to the idea of presenting our twenty long years of experiences (1988-2009) in this Notebook by pulling together women’s struggles for their rights and leave us with a spirit and sense of victory!

Glimpses of the 2010 Notebook – of stories celebrating enduring friendships, of women taking flights far beyond their confines, of the account of women’s struggles in their political environments, and finally drawing together the hopes and dreams of women in search of a possible anchor.

Contribution Price : Rs. 150/-

To place your orders, please contact us at distribution@jagori.org or call us at 26691219/20 or fax at 26691221

JAGORI Notebook 2009 – Aurat aur Shram : Haq aur Samman.

JAGORI has been working on the issues of women workers in the informal economy, specially migrant women and we have explored the theme of women and work through the creative medium of a notebook this time. Working women from different sectors have shared their experiences with us, including women working in their own homes, rag pickers, sex workers and domestic workers to name a few. The Notebook, while reflecting women’s voices, focuses on and gives recognition to women’s labour, both within or outside the home, questions the status and dignity of women’s work and discusses gender discrimination at the workplace. Some of the features of the notebook include 100 pages for writing, a 12 month planner and calendar, a list of women’s groups, thematic note on women and work and the references.

The JAGORI notebooks or diaries came out yearly from 1988 to 1994 and then again in 1998, 2001, 2005, 2006, 2009 and 2010. The renowned diaries have become a special part of JAGORI’s story; the idea started when….

“In other groups, we talked about what was happening to other women, especially to women of their classes. Here, we could talk to other women, especially to women of other classes. Here we could talk about our own experiences. The diary was a space where this possibility (was) opened. Poems and drawings came from within. We were looking for a language to communicate the nuances of women’s lives and experiences.”
(One of the founding members)

The first diary took as its theme an exploration of the self, searching within. Touching those areas that had been hidden and covered with cobwebs, sharing one’s dream and hopes for oneself. The poems in the diary reached out to those suppressed parts of all women’s lives, and enabled JAGORI members to express parts of their inner lives that were being suppressed: “the brush of protest painted all our experiences into one colour”…the diary was a search for the various hues beneath this common experience of being an ‘activist’.

“I left in protest, to make a life of my own
but soon I became, like a pond, closed and
tied down by restraints again.”

“Where are you going
far, very far, so I can take a close look at myself
and then absorb everything around me.”

“I want to be the sun, the moon, the stars
everything. Not limited by any
boundaries.”

The second diary delved into relationships, especially among friends. It was also an ode to women’s strength and endurance. The third notebook revolved around the theme of community living, using the courtyard as a metaphor for a women’s space. Other diaries in the following years have explored the lives and experiences of single women, experiences of the body and sexuality, women and literacy/ language, women’s reproductive rights, women in local governance, and a woman’s search for her own home.

The form, the content, the process of making them, make these diaries unique. They do not intend to deliver a message, but rather invite the reader to share in the process of self discovery. These diaries, dealing with emotions and hope, touch a chord in the hearts of a large number of women. They use poems and sketches as the main form of communication.
The diaries are also a collective product, with the inputs of many women other than those in JAGORI. Meetings were held with other women´s groups, especially with women from the bastis (urban slums) to encompass a wide canvas of experiences.

Apart from this, each diary contains at the end factual information about interesting cases of the year, legal issues, information on the subject dealt with. For example the diary on reproductive health provided information about traditional remedies. The diary on single women had information about the rights of single women and about other groups working on the issue. In addition to this, all the diaries contain a menstrual calendar that women can use to chart their cycle.

The diaries have been very special spaces for all the women who have been involved in producing them and for the women who have revealed their personal lives in them. They are an attempt to move away from feminism as an ideology to something that is created in the interstices of women´s experiences of womanhood and their questioning of patriarchy and injustice.

Excerpted from: ´JAGORI´, by Kalpana Viswanath in Living Collections, Isis International – Manila, 1997