The Railway girls’ photo stories are here! We’ve definitely got some budding actresses—or at least some latent mimes—over here in the 8th class. Here’s what the girls came up with:

1) The Traditional Dress of Hindu & Muslim Girls

I was especially excited to see this photo story, and I learned a lot from the girls who made it–coming from the black-and-beige palette of New York, India has been an absolute lesson in color and design for me.

In India, the equivalent to the classic American jeans-and-a-tee-shirt is the sari, a garment that isn’t pre-manufactured, but instead is tailored and wrapped differently for each individual woman. Indian girls must grow up with color and design in their DNA, seeing all those yards of color and bold patterning and lovely draping every day and everywhere. Even the most basic garment, the solid-color sari, will be in the most vibrant wash of saffron or royal blue.

Besides, clothing isn’t just a beautiful embellishment in India—garments like the half-sari, the sari, the headscarf, and the burqa have traditionally served as markers of different stages in a girl’s life, in both Hindu and Muslim cultures. It’s interesting to consider these clothing associations (half-sari or churidar/shalwar kameez if you’re unmarried, sari if you’re married, etc.) now that the forces of modernization and globalization are changing up the norms—all of our Railway girls were aware of the traditional significance behind certain items of clothing, but a lot of them said they’d just prefer to wear jeans.

Clothing in India is nowhere as sportswear-homogenized as I’ve seen in America, Europe, and much of Asia, but I wonder whether it’s heading in that direction.

 

The Traditional Dress of Hindu & Muslim Girls from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

2) Diksha Grows Up at Railway Girls’ High School

Railway Girls’ School is really more like a family—most of the students attend Railway from 1st standard to 10th standard, so they grow up with the same group of girls throughout their time at the school. The faculty encourages the girls to explore every facet of their interests, offering classes in art, music, dance, sports, and computer training, as well as supporting extracurricular programs like TMS.

This kind of genuine investment in students’ whole character and development is, unfortunately, exceptional, and not only in the context of government schools in India. Like Sam said in the previous post, I’m really happy to be a part of the Railway community. And I think the girls in our class are too—here’s a photo story to take you through the time they’ve spent at Railway and what they’re looking forward to in the next few years.

 

Diksha Grows Up at Railway Girls’ High School from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

3) Kajal’s Ambition

This is probably my favorite shot from the last few months—the girl with the deathstare is Kajal, played by Heena in an impressive display of method acting, restrained by her shrunken father Arpitha on the right and his giantess-wife Muneer on the left.In this photo story, Kajal wants to become a doctor, as do many of the girls in our class. As I mentioned in my last post, we want to encourage the students to think of their ambition not as a rote answer to a rote question or some kind of distant fantasy, but as a real goal with concrete steps to be strived toward. In this photo story, the girls tell us why Kajal wants to become a doctor, what happens when she gets low marks on a test in college, and what happens when her tyrannical parents, Arpitha and Muneer, force her to get married.

 

Kajal’s Ambition from The Modern Story on Vimeo.