I adopted my daughter (Indian Express)

 

It’s 9:48 pm. As I put my eight-month-old to bed, my lower back and frozen shoulders sigh: One more day down. I wonder why everyone says, “They grow up too fast!”.

I go over my mental to-do list for the day to gauge how I fared with the baby:
Protein: Check
Fruits and vegetables: Check
Supplements: Check
Learning and development through toys and activities: Check
Exposure to nature and socialising through stroller walk: Check
Exposure to music by playing baby Mozart and Indian devotional songs: Check
Diaper-free time: Check

However, there’s always room to learn, and do more and better when it comes to a baby. So, I open a moms’ group on WhatsApp meant for discussions about newborn to about six-month-old babies. On this group, I have found recommendations for the best wet wipe, inquired about others’ experiences in dealing with their children’s constipation, got educated about products like steriliser bags which I didn’t know about, and more. This group (and others on social media) consists of moms. Period. They could be mothers through the biological route or adoption or surrogacy. There is no mention as to which mom is an adoptive parent and hence no way to know otherwise. Moms are moms. Except that I learnt our trials and tribulations are very different.

I underwent IVF cycles which were torturous on my mind and body both. My friends and relatives who have carried babies in their womb tell me that the dreamy baby-bump photoshoots are a fraud. The reality is nausea, back pain, and an unwieldy body.

In the adoptive-parent community, we guesstimate when our bundle will arrive based on when our peers with similar dates of registration and choices, like the age bracket of the child, received theirs. My “pregnancy” was so smooth that I didn’t even realise when I was in my first trimester, second trimester, third trimester or had already popped the baby as the child matched with us could be of any age within the chosen two-year bracket.

If the birthing complications, labour pain, and physical recovery from a C-section were not enough, I learnt from the Whatsapp group about the complications in breastfeeding. On one hand were the full-spectrum issues on the demand (baby) side from hard latch to breast refusal whereas on the supply side were problems ranging from low to excess milk production (leading to a serious medical condition called mastitis). And then there was the pumping and correct storing of milk to match the demand and supply. I was happy I didn’t have to put my mind into buying the right breast-pump or consulting a lactation expert. I would gleefully skim through the majority of the messages, mentally checking them off as non-applicable. However, I wondered if our greatest pain-point in life was justified: Getting up once in the middle of the night, reaching for the Dr Brown’s bottle on the bedside table, pouring lukewarm water in it from a thermos, downing pre-measured formula into it, shaking the bottle, and dunking it in the baby’s mouth.

One avenue for respite for the mother could be savouring food and beverages that she enjoys but apparently the baby’s colic doesn’t like the exact same menu. A breastfeeding mom shared on the group that she detected that wheat and coffee made her baby cry incessantly and so she had to eliminate those from her diet. Interestingly, colic bids farewell at about three months of age and that is the earliest that a child becomes legally free for adoption: It takes a couple of months for the child to be registered in the adoption system after ensuring there is no claim from his/her family. We were blessed with our daughter when she was a quarter of a year old and we both have lived happily ever after: She is relishing her formula milk and I have enjoyed not having to follow any formula. I continue to devour my papdi chaat (a tangy and spicy snack) and masala chai guilt-free. To each her own (gas).

Adoption may entail a long wait to get the baby in your arms, but I thought it’s a shortcut to all of the above. So whenever I feel like I’m dealing with a lot, I surf the Whatsapp group and sleep peacefully: Feeling a deep respect for biological moms and gratitude that I’m not one.

(Read the article on Indian Express website here!)

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Managing the tricky art of breaking the news of a baby (Mint Lounge)

 

“It’s a girl!”

Scratch that.

It wasn’t a surprise: We chose to have a daughter over a son.

 

“Born on …”

Delete.

Who sends a baby announcement after 3.5 months?

“Weighing…”

Erase.

Our delicate darling’s kilos were nothing worth flaunting about.

 

I was making a creative on Canva to share the homecoming of our heart baby with select friends on WhatsApp when I realised that the templates for a baby announcement needed major tweaking for our kind of good news.

We had decided we would not broadcast our adopted daughter’s arrival but would share it with a handful of people, including close connections, fellow adoptive parents we knew, and my husband’s team members who will need to discount his dozing off during meetings.

We were hoping that our outer circle would come to know that we have a child when our daughter is 2-3 years old, which is past the stage of “OMG, Congratulations!” and a suite of questions about sleepless nights, timeline of my pregnancy and their memory of my bump.

But contrary to my plan, the word about our daughter got around faster.

The three of us were invited to a birthday party of a toddler whose parents we liked in our apartment building. While the hosts knew about the new addition in our family, other parents of children who lived in the same building and were invited to the party expressed their surprise on suddenly seeing us with a stroller and diaper bag. I had bumped into one of the moms randomly while walking downstairs on an average of two times per month in the last two years that we had been living in this community. She was the type who would check you out from top to bottom while saying the cursory “Hi”. At the party, she told me she didn’t notice that I was pregnant last year. I merely gave her the sweetest smile ever.

Then there is the naïve type who doesn’t know how to be politically correct. One woman I had crossed paths with while coming out of the elevator with the stroller, parroted multiple times that she never saw my bump, as if her saying the same thing repeatedly would eventually get me to open my mouth about it. I gave her the same harmless smile as if to say, “Interpret it as you please: surrogacy, adoption or some divine intervention.”

There is also the suave sort who know how to mask their surprise with the right thing to say: “You don’t look like you delivered six months back!” I smiled and thanked her, adding, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

When we realised that there was no escaping people who live in the same apartment complex, we decided to throw a small “bless our baby” party, inviting a few fellow residents. Everything was going fine until a kid mentioned how much he loved the YouTube series Ninja Kidz and added emphatically that one of the kids in it is adopted. An awkward silence ensued.

Comparatively, our adoptive-parent friends who brought their child home during covid had it easy. Opening the door of your house after the lockdown years and having two-and-a-half people emerging from it didn’t raise an eyebrow.

But our awkward conversations were not just because of being seen. Our absence also raised questions: An inquisitive acquaintance, who is part of a social group that my husband and I are also a part of, noticed that we have been MIA for a few months. She pushed us into a corner till we told her. We had to tell her how special she is to us that we were divulging this precious news to her and hardly anyone else. We figured she would find out at some point.

We were not only caught out by our physical presence or absence; even the online arena didn’t spare us. I didn’t post pictures of our baby on Instagram. However, I did ask for recommendations for cute beach-wear brands for infants on a women’s WhatsApp group that shares suggestions on everything from doctors to restaurants at exotic holiday destinations to tailors for alterations. In the fraction of a second, one of the girls on the group who I meet once a quarter at social events messaged me directly asking if I was expecting. I replied I have a 6-month-old, and left her wondering.

Our intent behind not broadcasting our adoption is not to hide that we became parents through this channel. It is to disclose about our baby only to emotionally sensitive and mature people who will not say a version of “She’s so lucky to have you both as parents” or “You did such a noble deed by adopting.” Considering the long wait from filing the papers to bringing your child home, it is clear that adoption is no charity.

So, I punched in to the Canva search bar “heart baby announcement”, and that displayed a template with a few hearts strung on a thread. We sent out the creative, hoping the recipients get the subtle reference. Those who don’t can keep deciphering it like they do my mysterious smile.

(Read the article on Mint website here)

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A mother’s notes on what the endless wait to adopt a child feels like (Mint Lounge)

“Please describe the procedures you and your spouse used to reach a decision.”

This wasn’t an inquiry raised by a psychologist during a couple’s therapy session, but a question in the Home Study Report (HSR). My husband and I were required to fill this as the preliminary step towards applying with the Child Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), which comes under the Union Ministry of Women & Child Development, to adopt our daughter. From assessing the quality of the marriage of the Prospective Adoptive Parents (PAPs) and the financial position to the motivation behind the adoption, the HSR interrogates everything. Since safety of the child is at the center of this due diligence, we responded to the questions even while squirming internally.

The online submission of the report is usually followed by visit of a social worker to the prospective parents’ home to validate the responses. During such a visit, people put forward their best selves forward to not get rejected on grounds of being physically, mentally and financially incapable of raising the child. On the day of our scheduled home-study, the house was vacuumed, our clothes were ironed, and freshly-baked cookies were laid out with tea. The social worker inspected every corner of our house while asking us the questions in the HSR, tallying the answers we had submitted. She went back pleased that we had mosquito mesh in our balcony and a common play area for kids in the apartment complex.  

My husband and I finished the formalities after a friend, who had adopted, urged us to put in the paperwork, while warning us about the 1.5-2 year-long-waiting period between registering with CARA and getting the initial call for adoption. This was May 2020. My husband was feeling the void of a child during the covid-19 lockdown. I was done with futile IVF cycles. And that’s how we joined the waiting list.

Soon thereafter, our adoptive-parent friends added us to various WhatsApp and Facebook groups consisting largely of PAPs and a few adoptive parents who had been there, done that. On these groups, the communities shared steps to follow—from getting referral of a child to securing the final adoption order. Some even shared a checklist of things to carry when going to bring the child home. There was also general conversation on books and movies on adoption. The WhatsApp groups would buzz on referral days when CARA would match children in the adoption pool with parents in the waiting list. The PAPs would often guess when their lucky day would arrive based on their date of registration. Under the new system, parents would get to choose zones—east, west, north or south— instead of states. The age bracket and gender that parents mentioned as an option also added to the waiting period. For instance, for those who had ticked the age-bracket of 0-4 years had a longer waiting period—almost 3.5 years.

As we hit the three-year mark of our registration, my husband started charting referral dates of PAPs (as shared on the WhatsApp groups) on an Excel Sheet to codify when we would receive ours. But during some weeks, the CARA referral algorithm (which nobody has been able to crack) would throw the Excel formula off.

Anyways, just when my husband had convinced me that in any scenario, 2023 was perhaps not the year we would get our baby, my phone rang on Wednesday, 13 December 2023, around noon. I was almost not going to pick up the call from an unknown number, thinking it must be telemarketing. The man on the other side informed me that he was calling from the Specialized Adoption Agency (SAA) in Gujarat, where a child had been matched to our profile. I couldn’t believe it as I hadn’t received an email or SMS from CARA regarding the referral, which was the protocol. But the caller urged me to log into my CARA portal. When I did, it was indeed there: the passport size photo of the child, Medical Examination Report (MER) and Child Study Report (CSR). 

I hadn’t heard my heartbeat clearer: Our 48-hour window to accept or let go of the referral had begun. I frantically called my husband who was travelling for work. We got on a Zoom call, quickly shared a moment of disbelief and excitement, and opened the list of pediatricians we had prepared to send the MER to. And so, by the end of the window, we hit the ‘accept’ button on the portal. We booked our tickets to fly to Ahmedabad the following morning and drive a couple of hours to the agency to meet ‘our daughter’. Needless to say, I was restless throughout the journey.

At the agency, when they brought her to the administration area to meet us and the petite damsel in oversized, mismatched clothes locked eyes with ours, we knew she was the piece in our hearts that was missing. We might have written in our HSR that we make our decisions by weighing the pros and cons of all scenarios, but here was a no-brainer. 

(Read the article on Mint Lounge here!)

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Social Media Marketing

I undertook social-media marketing (both strategy and execution) for Gram Vaani from April to October last year. Here are some of my top insights and learnings from the experience:

1. If your organization’s accounts already exist on social-media platforms, audit the previous posts to gauge the tone and language that is set and also what kind of posts garner better engagement than the others. As much as possible, continue with the elements that work well for your brand so that the transition is least jarring for your followers.
2. Good content will do well organically. While promotions may bring those exponential spikes; the only sustainable approach is to create quality content consistently that connects with your audience at an emotional level.
3. Represent all your stakeholders in your social-media posts including donors/funders, partners, team members from CEO/founder to junior-most employees. And tag their correct account handles!
4. Social-media management requires a balance between content that’s current and that which is planned beforehand. While you can plan for communication on important days of the year for the thematic-area/s you work in and other posts which are not time-sensitive, there are many external events/news that will come up that you could not have accounted for when you charted the social-media calendar (for example, organization’s participation in a conference, an award conferred on founder/CEO, reaching an impact milestone etc.). Be agile.
5. Inculcate diversity in types of media accompanying posts from posters to short videos as well as in content buckets from human stories to big-picture impact numbers.
6. ‘Social’ comes first in ‘social media.’ Social media is not just about posting content about your organization, it is also about responding to other’s comments on your posts and engaging with posts of people/organizations in your ecosystem.
7. Maintain the spirit of your organization and its work on your social-media. Don’t feel forced to adhere to sensibility of the platform (For example, Instagram is a casual platform but you have chosen to be present on the same because your audience/s are on the platform. You don’t have to create reels using playful filters and effects if that does not align with the ethos of your org). This also does not mean that your content/design has to be uncreative :)
8. No typos please. Spelling/grammar mistakes in your design copy and caption reflect poorly on the organization’s image.
9. Clean design in form of a relevant poster that conforms to your brand colours/aesthetic and communicates the message of the post succinctly or a short video or an infographic will help capture that fleeting attention span. Social-media (unlike email) is a very visual medium where people scroll as opposed to perusing every word.
10. Increase in the number of followers is one metric of success but what’s more important is who is following your account and what they’re doing with your content. Ideally, you want people/organizations in your TG to follow you and follow through your CTAs.

Are you an NGO, social enterprise or CSR that needs help with your social-media strategy and execution? Reach out at smitapkothari@gmail.com

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Annual report for Akanksha Foundation

A few months ago, The Akanksha Foundation took a bet on me to create their annual report for 2021-22. But I didn’t want to submit another PDF that just checks off the compliance box and that no one wants to read.

 
So I turned all notions of a usual annual-report upside down:
 
A typical annual-report relays information about the year gone by. I wanted to employ emotive storytelling and so we had a real Akanksha student give the audience a tour of the year at her beloved school.
 
A “normal” annual report is stuffed with exhaustive details about all the events that take place in the year. However, lengthy text is difficult to digest given limited attention-span. So I pushed for sharp bite-sized content sans jargons and edited it brutally to the point that each piece included was uber-essential.
 
A conventional annual-report, in its vertical scroll, often contains photos to give the viewers a window into the org and its work. I wanted to offer an authentic experience of visiting an Akanksha school digitally via horizontal design. The elements and backdrops you see in the report are all re-created based on actual photos of Akanksha school & classroom and so is Dhanashree – the Akanksha student who walks you through the report (literally!).
 
After several doubts, content drafts, and design-challenges: we produced https://annualreport.akanksha.org/introduction
 
Kudos to leadership at the organization for supporting an idea as radical as Akanksha itself!
 
Annual-report is such a powerful communication tool to showcase the happenings of the year to all stakeholders. Why should it be boring? What are some cool annual reports you have seen lately?

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Impact story workshop (training/capacity building)

 

These happy faces made one of my weekends last year!

A diverse cohort turned up for my impact-story workshop on a Saturday evening in late 2022 from :
🌏 Varied geographies like Canada, Australia, South Korea and of course, India
💟 Different cause areas from education to livelihoods to special needs
👩‍🏫 👨‍🏫 Representatives from non-profits, CSR and foundations

We discussed what an impact-story template/structure looks like, best practices to follow while writing the case study, how to customise your story for different audiences/stakeholders and more!

At the end of the session when I asked the participants to share their aha moment/key takeaway from the last 90 mins, one of them said that the entire session was an aha moment! That was my aha moment:)

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My Podcast: The Human(e) Story

I'm stoked to share my first podcast with you on heart-to-heart chats with changemakers: The Human(e) Story! 

The Human(e) Story features my conversations with stalwarts of social impact in India like Venkat Krishnan of GiveIndia and Anshu Gupta of Goonj via six pillar questions including what drives them, which stories are special to them, and how should one contribute to the society. If you're interested in the Indian development sector either as a practitioner, aspirant or supporter; this series is for you!

Listen to the podcast trailer and episodes on:
Spotify

Amazon Music

Apple Podcasts

This project is extremely special to me as it combines my love for creating something new from scratch in a new (audio) medium, emotive content, and checks off one more thing on my professional bucket list:) 

Do subscribe to the podcast on your favourite app to get notified when new episodes are added and please drop your thoughts/suggestions in the comments below!

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Quarantine tales: How Bengalureans are coping with lockdown (The Hindu)

At 6:07 pm on Wednesday, keyboard tunes to Kishore Kumar’s song Yeh Shaam Mastaani… (This fun evening…) reverberated in the quad of a gated community in Bangalore. The occasion: Self-imposed quarantine due to spread of COVID-19.

It started as a call for ideas to keep one entertained during the quarantine on the Whatsapp group comprising residents of the apartment complex. “Balcony antakshari” was a suggestion that amused many. The one who proposed it explained the novel concept in tweet-sized instructions: “We just pick a time, get onto the balcony facing the courtyard and play antakshari for a bit.” Another informed participant on the group posted a short video of how the Italian musicians were singing and playing instruments from their balconies. Yet another resident offered for her son to play keyboard attached to speakers. That sealed it.

And so it was decided: It would be a 20-minute session on Wednesday at 6 pm when people would come to their balconies that look into a common courtyard and croon. Many like me started hovering around the balcony a little earlier than the designated time in excitement! And then a few minutes past 6 pm floated the familiar tune that beckoned some who weren’t on the Whatsapp group and some who were but had forgotten about the rendezvous. Young and young-at-heart, men and women gradually started popping in their balconies, some vigorously waving their hands at their long-lost neighbours. One of the following songs was the apt and relatable number Mere Samne Wali Khidki Mein… (In the window opposite to mine…). Very quickly, I realized that the intersection of my loudest and my suitable-to-human-ear voice could not travel beyond my balcony. I think many others who realized the same compensated with loud clapping at the end of each keyboard song-recital to make their presence felt and to appreciate the player’s efforts. And thus, “balcony antakshari” turned into “balcony concert.” The keyboard player became the community hero and compliments and wishes for a bright future were sent his way in wholesale on the Whatsapp group. The concert for the evening had ended with Chalte Chalte…Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna… (Never say goodbye…).

Now that we were hooked, we heeded to the advice. Next evening, a German lady whose father was an opera singer in Austria, offered to play his CDs from her balcony. And the day after that, a stereo blasted kids’ favorites like Prince Ali from Aladdin, Sunflower from Spiderman, and We Will Rock You by Queen from someone’s balcony.

Next up was drinks. Another resident showcased on the Whatsapp group a cocktail she had concocted and christened Corona Cashaya. The professional-looking creative that left others on the group drooling, had the beverage served on the rocks with a blob of ginger and a whole lemon artistically placed next to the glass. The post was not meant to make others jealous. The drink-maker had bottled three of the same and made them available free for grabs. “Will just drop at your door and leave,” she offered generously. “Important to keep spirits up!!” the post ended with a smiley. And thus began the auction on the group that lasted nine mighty minutes. This left some, who missed the window, enraged. And so, the next batch was promised.

Then came Sunday, March 22, when PM Modi had urged everyone across the nation to follow Janta Curfew i.e. to remain in their houses during the day as a drill for future lockdown. And the occupants in my residential complex did everything prescribed which is to do nothing at all. Children didn’t play in the quad, garbage collection was paused for the day, domestic help was not allowed to enter the premises etc. etc.

Such are the times in my gated community. Usual measures like sanitizers at the gate, recording temperature of the maids who come from outside, and closing access to common areas of the club-house like gym and pool, were implemented like they were in my friends’ gated communities in different parts of the city. In addition, COVID-19 has helped discover music lovers, mixologists, and patriots in my community so far.

(Here's the link to my article on The Hindu's website)

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Family Trees (The Caravan Magazine)

Shyam Sunder Paliwal was the sarpanch of Piplantri, a village in Rajasthan’s Rajsamand district, between 2005 and 2010. His father helped a marble company establish a unit in the village. In return, the company let his family sell its scrap marble, making them affluent. Over the years, excessive marble mining and sporadic droughts caused a severe depletion in the village’s groundwater levels. Water could not be found in the area, even by drilling tube wells four hundred feet deep.

On 21 August 2006, Kiran, Paliwal’s 16-year-old daughter, died of dehydration after suffering from diarrhoea. Devastated by her death and recognising the urgent need to rejuvenate the water table, Paliwal launched the Kiran Nidhi Yojana, in 2007. The KNY mandates that the parents of a newborn girl plant 111 trees. The father or guardian of the girl are asked to pay Rs 10,000, while Rs 21,000 is collected from other villagers and philanthropists. The total amount of Rs 31,000 is invested in a fixed deposit, redeemable when the girl turns 18 years old. The money is expected to be used to fund her higher education and wedding. In exchange, the parents are asked to sign an affidavit promising to take care of the trees and not marry off their daughter until she attains adulthood. After the wedding, the trees become the property of the panchayat, with any income they generate being used for developmental activities.

Paliwal’s biggest challenge in implementing the scheme, he told me, was “to recover the government land that was encroached.” Convincing villagers, who saw the economic benefits of the scheme, was relatively easier. The KNY is now linked to the Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana, a central-government deposit scheme launched in 2015, as part of the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao campaign.

(Continue reading the remaining part of the article here!)

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How some men want to change Meghalaya's matrilineal society (The Economic Times)

(Smita in Smit, cultural centre of Meghalaya, with King outside his royal hut!)

Marbakynsai Marbaniang, 37, guffaws as he recalls the time he moved into his wife’s mother’s house in Sohryngkham 10 years back. “Even the way you press Colgate is different,” he says. Before getting married, he used to press the toothpaste from the bottom. Now he presses the tube from the top. 

Marbaniang is among some 1.7 million people belonging to the Khasi-Jaintia Scheduled Tribes (ST) of Meghalaya, who follow the matrilineal system. Unlike most of India, where a sobbing bride moves into her husband’s house, a man in Meghalaya “adjusts” in his wife’s house after nuptials. Apart from the Khasi-Jaintia tribes in the state, the Garo tribe, which comprises nearly 30% of the state population of around 3 million, also follows the matrilineal culture of passing down the family name and ancestral property through the female line of descent. “Clan’s lineage and custody of ancestral property are the nerve centres around which the matrilineal system exists in Meghalaya,” says Banrida Langstieh, associate professor at the department of anthropology at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. 

This way of life, dating back centuries, is facing challenges as some men say it is not working for them, and the centrality of the maternal uncle disappears. It is becoming common for people to pass on acquired property (as against inherited assets) to male children. The problems faced by the men in these tribes are not dissimilar to what women face in the patriarchal norm elsewhere, and shines a light on the centrality of inheritance in gender dynamics. 

There are close to 500 matrilineal societies in the world, with Minangs of Indonesia being the largest of them with a population of over 4 million. The common denominator among all of them is that lineage of its members is traced through the mother’s side of the family. Their cultural practices (for example, post-marital residence and inheritance of property), however, vary. 

In India, Nairs in Kerala practised matriliny till 1925 when it was terminated by law. In contrast, although 80% of the tribal folk in Meghalaya have converted to Christianity and the state’s neighbours practise patriarchy like the rest of India, matriliny is the norm among a majority of the tribal populace in Meghalaya. Langstieh says the matrilineal culture in Meghalaya is the only surviving system of the sort in India on this scale. 

Shariti Syiem, 36, wife of Marbaniang, is the only daughter of her parents. The tribal tradition of the region prescribes that when a man marries the youngest (or only) daughter of a Khasi family, he has to settle in his mother-in-law’s house. “As Shariti is the only daughter, there was no escape for me but to join her family,” Marbaniang says. 

Among the Khasis, the youngest daughter is the steward of ancestral property, which had passed down to her mother from her grandmother and so on. But increasingly, acquired property doesn’t necessarily pass on along matrilineal lines. Syiem, who says she loves her son as much as her daughter, wants to give “something” to her son. Syiem runs a three-room bed-and-breakfast (BnB) in Sohryngkham (a village in East Khasi Hills, some 21 km from the capital Shillong) on the same premises as her ancestral house where she lives with her family. “I’ll give the BnB house to my son whereas the ancestral house will go to my daughter,” Syiem says. 

‘They Die at 40’A men’s rights group called Syngkhong Rympei Thymmai (SRT), meaning a wedge that stabilises the shaking home, has been advocating equitable division of property to all children irrespective of gender. Broadly, SRT has been striving to overturn matriliny and establish patriliny in the Khasi tribe since 1990. Keith Pariat, former president of SRT, argues that the Khasi men have been languishing because of matriliny, as they don’t have a sense of belonging either in their parents’ home or in their mother-in-law’s. “The Khasi boys drop out of school in Class V-VI, make merry with friends, drink and do drugs, play guitar, and die by 40,” Pariat says. 

The condition of Khasi men has degraded to such an extent, Pariat says, that Khasi women do not want to marry them. 

According to the National Family Health Survey 2005-06 data, 25% of Meghalaya citizenry marries inter-caste, compared with the national average of 10%. He says the tribal women of Meghalaya end up marrying immigrants from Bangladesh, for example, who may be lured by the income tax exemption accorded to STs under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution of India. Because of the union of Khasi women with non-Khasi men, the purity of the Khasi tribe is on the path to extinction, he argues. 

In addition to the matter of property, SRT has also been demanding a change, which is at the core of matrilineal culture — they want children to take the surnames of fathers rather than mothers. Pariat, who along with his three sisters and two brothers uses his father’s title, reasons that a father would feel more responsible towards his children if they belong to his clan. Across the country, Meghalaya, with around 22% single mothers, according to Census 2011, records the highest rate of abandonment of women by their husbands. While this is not a taboo in Khasi culture, it has an undeniable impact on children — they are twice as likely to drop out of school to help their single mothers earn, compared with kids raised by two parents. 

Sometimes though, material considerations come in the way of ideology. A Khasi is deemed to be one only if the person takes the name of the mother’s clan, according to the Khasi Lineage Act passed by the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council. This is the key that unlocks reservation quotas for STs in jobs and education. “I allowed my daughter to use her mother’s title to collect the governor’s scholarship,” Pariat says. He adds that he also did not want his daughter to lose out on the ancestral property from her maternal side on account of using her paternal surname. Pariat’s son, however, retains his father’s title. 

SRT’s supporters are mostly concentrated in Shillong. The influence of the group’s ideology is limited in rural areas, which constitute 80% of the state. Smit, a village in the district of East Khasi Hills, is the cultural centre where the royal family lives. Arun Lyngdoh, 67, who dons a black Columbia Sportswear jacket, married the present queen mother 35 years ago (In Khasi royalty, brother of queen mother is the king). “In a Khasi family, a father may be the head but mother is the neck and the head turns wherever the neck turns,” he says. After marriage, Lyngdoh relocated to the royal wood-and-straw hut. Adjoining the royal residence is a brick-and-mortar house where Lyngdoh’s daughter lives with her husband. Lyngdoh listens to transistor radio in the royal hut, which has no electricity. But when he wants to watch TV, he visits his daughter’s house. “No, no, no shift to patriliny here,” Lyngdoh attests about the 5,000 subjects living in Smit. 

When a movement for patriliny similar to SRT erupted in 1961 in Cherrapunjee, the epicenter of Khasi culture, the three-dozen men of the group were chased by women in the bazaar with knives, old-timers recall. 

Langstieh says there is no written script suggesting the origin of matrilineal system in the tribes of the region. However, she adds that folktales suggest that their tribal ancestors were warriors from Southeast Asia who fought feuds with other tribes. Since there was no certainty of men returning from these battles, they gave entitlement of land and lineage to the women (whom they had left behind) so that their identity did not perish. 

The Vanishing Uncle
Moreover, the maternal uncle, who was a central figure in the original matrilineal structure, has been taking backstage in the region. Earlier, the maternal uncle would spend most of the day at his sister’s house, disciplining her children, and his earnings from cultivation would also go towards her household. However, as author and priest Sngi Lyngdoh wrote in the preface to the 1994 book The Khasis and Their Matrilineal System: “The present one is a system that has no root in history as a matrilineal system since the uncle as the centre of authority and economy, of discipline and of the government of the family as a clan, has disappeared from the scene… He does not live and work in his sister’s house anymore! He does not feed, clothe and look after his nephews and nieces anymore!” 

Marbaniang is a farmer who works and stays at the state government’s tea estate near Shillong for half of the week. Back in Sohryngkham for the remainder of the week, his wife and kids are his priority. “On some Sundays when I have to get a haircut, I visit my mother’s house in Shillong as the salon is next to the house,” he says. Marbaniang has four sisters. Although in the Khasis, the youngest daughter is supposed to take care of her parents while staying in the ancestral house, Marbaniang’s youngest sister moved to Prague after marrying a Punjabi. Therefore, his other sister is tending to their mother. 

Marbaniang realises that like his sister, his nine-year-old daughter might also marry a non-Khasi one day and they (his daughter and her husband) may choose to live as a nuclear family in their own house. “In that case, Shariti and I are mentally prepared to move into an old-age home,” he says. 

While his future son-in-law may not inhabit his wife’s house, Marbaniang wishes that his six year-old son follow in his footsteps and conforms to the culture of their ancestors from time immemorial. “Now I drink with my father-in-law,” says Marbaniang, as proof that he has adjusted to his in-law’s house and that life for a son-in-law like him gets better after a while. 

(Here's the article on ET's website)

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