Wings of Hope is a visual project on Rehana, our house help. Through this project, I want to show the growth of Rehana as a person, from a house help just fixated on working rigorously and serving her family to a more confident and hopeful woman.
Born in a small village in Bihar, Rehana is a simple girl who does not want to agree with her norms. Her curious nature does not go along very well with her family. As a result, she has complications with her family but her problem-solving attitude always finds a way to balance their expectations and her own dreams.
At the tender age of 14, she was compelled to leave her studies at a Medersa and support her family. Her family consists of her mother, father, four sisters and three brothers. She had worked across various places from Nepal to Banaras for as low as 25 rupees a day. She has helped her parents build a house in their village, helped them during her sister's marriage, and also helps in paying the debt off her father.
There are many-a-times when she felt suffocated before resuming her studies, post resuming it, those episodes are fewer. As a dreamer, she does not want to achieve many things in her life, just to grow as a human and understand the world better in her own unique ways. The newfound confidence in her might lead her towards the person she always wanted to be.
I find her quite interesting as she has a dire curiosity about everything. She questions even the most mundane things and tries new ways of answering basic questions which she had asked herself. She always has a very distinct positive outlook towards the things happening in her life and loves to solve problems with her own methods.
These are just a fraction of the questions bombarding her mind every day. Just as Abert Einstein said ''One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.''
