Making every girl visible

Real stories of how the female child is unwanted & neglected

- SUDIPTA DATTA

THE UPHILL JOURNEY of life begins with their name. Maafi. Faaltu. Manbhaari. Nakushi. Antimbala. India takes the naming of children seriously, and yet too many girls are being told they are a burden the moment they enter the world.

This is the devastating truth that Safeena Husain introduces upfront in her book, Every Last Girl, a meticulous recording of her experience of trying to step in, gingerly at first, to rattle and shake up India’s deeply entrenched prejudice against the girl child.

“A girl Arrives (Aachuki). Unwanted (Nakushi). Her parents see her as Useless (Faaltu). They have a heavy heart (Manbhaari), they are Sorry (Maafi)...even Angry (Naraaz). They make a plea: Stop (Galla)! And they hope she is the Last Girl (Antimbala),” she writes.

These names reveal a thought process that has morphed into a state of being. The girls are held back, she notes, by a mindset that keeps them out of school, denies them an education and sets them on an arrow pathway that leads to marriage and motherhood. Childhood is nonexistent. It’s not the same for boys, who are heralded into the home and village with much fanfare, ladoos et al, quite unlike the silence that greets the arrival of a girl child.

When Husain launched her NGO, Educate Girls, in 2007, she began field work in Rajasthan where she encountered these names—a staggering 1,516 girls were called Dhaapu (fed up)—which reflected a story, and the place from where her work would have to begin. The book chronicles this journey.