Against all odds | What makes women in this UP village, who can barely read or write, visit a library every Sunday

From the beginning, he kept the mandate deliberately open. There would be no fixed curriculum, no prescribed objectives. Whatever the community asked for, the library would try to provide. In the early years, children came. Men preparing for government exams came. Young girls in school and college came. But one group was consistently absent: the village’s married women.

“We did a survey,” says Lalit, “and realised they [the women] never thought the library could be a place for them.” The majority had not completed school. Most were not literate beyond writing their own name. They ran households, raised children in joint families, and managed farms. When asked if they might come to the library, many said the same things: They were too old to read. It was time for work, not leisure. Their in-laws would disapprove. There was, in any case, no culture of women simply going somewhere for no reason. “A lot of them have never been out of the village for leisure,” says Lalit.

Lalit had another reason for wanting these women to engage with the library. The library was receiving calls from fathers asking the librarian not to issue storybooks to their children. They wanted only homework and exam preparation materials. The librarian tried to explain the value of reading for pleasure, but the conversation rarely landed. Lalit realised that if he could reach the mothers and help them see reading as something meaningful, they might become advocates at home.

So the library developed what it called a Women Leadership Enhancement Programme. Librarian Srajal began going door to door, gathering women in their own neighbourhoods and running small read-alouds in the village lanes. Slowly, the women started coming to the library – at first just to sit and talk, and then with more purpose.

This April, for the first time, a workshop was held for them that had nothing to do with conventional literacy. The workshop was organised by Lampshade Writers, a community literary initiative founded by Nivedita N, who began it as an online poetry-sharing group during the pandemic. Lampshade has long supported the Bansa Library, funding the librarian’s salary through collections from its events. They brought in Pune-based Garima Mishra, a poet and writer, who had earlier conducted a workshop with the village children.

When she first heard about the group – women who could not read and could not write – her initial challenge was clear: “How do I conduct a writing workshop when they can’t read and they can’t write?” She arrived at an answer quickly. “Creative writing is more about thinking creatively than vocalising in words. Writing is more about expression rather than performance.”

The workshop was conducted online. Over four Sundays in March and April, from three to four in the afternoon – the only hour the women could step away from household duties – sessions around speaking, listening, observing, and imagining were structured. There was one firm rule: no wrong answers, no corrections, no judgment.

The first session in Hindi asked who they were, what their days looked like, and what they would show a visitor to their village. The women mentioned temples, a canal, a park, and the library. The task at the end of the day – walk home the route you walk every day, but this time, actually look at it and think: ‘Today is special for me because…’

Replies came in unpolished sentences but carried raw reflection. Many cited the class itself as the highlight of their day.

The following week, they returned with what they had seen. One woman noticed that the leaves of a jujube tree she had passed for years were not all the same colour. It reminded her of picking jujubes as a child with her friends. Another stopped to smell a rose bush. A third spotted curry leaves and, on the strength of that discovery, a small group planned to arrive early for the next session to sit together under a tree.

“No one has ever asked us what makes us happy,” an attendee said that day. “This type of question about our happiness, no one has ever asked.”

The third session turned toward emotion, for which relatable scenarios were offered – a goat stolen, a neighbour in a better sari, a son doing well in his life. The words came: jealousy, stress, anger, pride. ‘If my heart could speak, it would say…’ was this time’s prompt.

The many lives of ‘Phoolwati’

By the fourth session, the women were ready to tell a story based on a fictional character, Phoolwati. Phoolwati’s life became a revelation of their own desires.

Shanti created a 15-year-old Phoolwati who was curious and determined, spending long hours in the village library, dreaming of earning for her family. Bitan’s Phoolwati was 20, studied hard, and became a doctor. Srajal imagined a 21-one-year-old who dreamed big and wanted food and grocery delivery services to reach Bansa.

The workshop ended, but the change had begun. “It is very rare that anything in villages happens for no reason at all,” says Lalit. “Everything is very much transactional. But there was nothing of that sort in these workshops. It was purely leisure, a fun thing.” “Din mein thodi sundarta aa gayi, bahut accha class tha (Some beauty was added to the ordinary day, it was a lovely class),” said Sumitra Devi, one of the attendees.

Today, the library is a witness to the change. The children still come. The men preparing for exams still come. But on Sunday afternoons, a group of women who were once told they had no reason to be there have started making it a room of their own.

(Ira Kharshikar is an intern with The Indian Express)