JAGORI Notebooks

The JAGORI notebooks or diaries came out yearly from 1988 to 1994 and then again in 1998 and 2001. 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