SOCRATIC METHOD

late november-early december 2006
my friend Rowena has a wonderful gift for making warm, deep, lasting connections with random people who instantly adore her. one of these is a woman she met on the train, a grandmother who teaches high school biology, writes Urdu poetry and historical pamphlets on the side, and harbors a boldly iconoclastic and exploratory mind. she is passionate about the rights of women and hates the oppressions of organized religion, but feels obliged to only allow free rein to her progressive opinions in private.

a few weeks later she invited us to her home, sat us down for tea and sweets, shared pictures of her daughter and grandchild, her poems, and back issues of magazines from Manushi [the Delhi-based social justice and women’s rights organization], and launched direct into the frank questions she wanted to ask-- in those precious spaces where which women can speak freely with one another, she said.
what do you think about premarital sex?
what do you think about homosexuality? crime, sin, choice, nature?
what do you think is the best way to deal with homosexual teenagers?
what about domestic violence?
when do you think a woman should leave her husband? if she is in an abusive relationship, what should she do?
what do you think about god?
it was a treasured experience both as language practice and as a unique human connection.

but before this, she had invited Ro to bring a couple of her friends along to speak to the students at her school and i got the opportunity to be one of them. based on the quickie tour we were given, the school itself was quite impressive. it felt happy and open rather than highly disciplinary and driven as i had perhaps unfairly expected. the student body is mostly Muslim with a few Hindus, but they were in the midst of celebrating Eid, Divali and Christmas...because they think holidays are fun plus the school is committed to counteracting communalism. in rather Hogwartian mode, there are are 4 “houses” even though it’s not a boarding school, named for Tagore, Gandhi, Mhd. Iqbal and Sir Syed Ahmad Khan; each group is photographed wearing color-coded accessories to their uniforms.

so Ro and Julie and i found ourselves seated at a table with microphones in front of a roomful of somewhere between 50 and 100 students. i’d guess the students were between 14 and 16, both boys and girls. some of the girls and some of the female teachers wore hijab, others didn’t, and it didn’t seem to be a big deal for anyone. what impressed me was that both the boys and the girls who spoke seemed extremely smart, self-possessed, confident and well-spoken...which pleasantly counteracted all stereotypical and statistical expectations about Indian Muslim girls in particular being suppressed intellectually and socially.

nevertheless i was sort of terrified, since this was much more formal and public than i’d been led to believe, and it was happening all in Hindi/Urdu! what, you want me to...speak??? first we each introduced ourselves, then students came up one by one to the mic to ask questions of our little panel, and then finally we asked them questions and they came up to answer in self-selected mode. some of their questions: [the usual.] why have you chosen to study Urdu? how did you come to be interested in India? what methods do you use in your studies? what problems have you encountered in Lucknow, and/or in your studies? what do you/Americans think about India? what do you/Americans think about Islam?

we talked about our own experiences and intentions in this language program, and were also quite honest about sexism in public spaces being a major problem for us in Lucknow. at one point we strayed toward criticism of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq but were gently diverted from this perilous path lest things get too sensitive for the school. next we returned questions like what about YOUR studies? why have YOU chosen to study Urdu as an optional elective? what do you, especially you girls, want to do when you’re done with school? what do you think about America?

they said that they liked American people but not American government policy; that studying Urdu is important to them because--shit, i can't remember that part--; and that choosing to wear hijab or not had nothing to do with whether or not a woman should work outside the home. of course she should. they wanted to be laywers, teachers, entrepreneurs. as we were leaving, some of the qirls tagged after us to shake our hands, beaming, and thank us for coming...some emotional to the point of being near tears, saying how much it meant to them for us to be there, and hoping we’d come back...i hope so too.