The authors are documentary film-makers who have been working on the life and art of a nonagenarian folklorist and performer of the mountain state of Uttarakhand, North India since 2002. Their location is a village called Dhungatoli, situateted on the left bank of the River Mahakali, on the eastern end of the state. The river also forms the natural border between India and Nepal. There are 100 households in Dhungatoli spread over the twin villages of Dhunga and Toli, with a total population of approximately 1,000, a considerable number of whom are of Nepali origin, as is the case with mountain villages all along the Mahakali. While working on their films, they had the chance to closely observe life in this corner of the world. They were struck by the fact that girls and women in the villages, on both sides of the river, form the majority of the ill population. Their lives are lived in unsanitary, unhygienic and unhealthy surroundings (for example, living spaces heavy with smoke from primitive indoor cooking-fires). Ignorance is compounded by the lack of access to information that could lighten their hardship. The situation is worsened by the difficult terrain, a degraded environment, where the forests have receded and natural sources of water dried-up, traditions that have become distorted or redundant over the decades, and a division of work between male and female that is heavily weighted on the woman’s side. The situation for the female child and teen-age girls is particularly alarming. The authors present three personal experiences that illustrate the prevalent situation for female children and teen-agers.
