'It's for my daughter's memory': the Indian village where every girl's life is celebrated. By Amrit Dhillon

By Dilip -
Shyam Sunder Paliwal knows his way through the trees. Pushing through low branches, he reaches a shady copse where a profusion of different varieties grow. Every evening, he comes here on his motorbike to see one tree in particular, a burflower – kadam in Hindi – that symbolises sublime love. In the silence of the copse, he wraps both arms tightly around the slender trunk and rests his head against it, eyes closed. “This is my daughter’s,” he says.

Kiran, Paliwal’s 16-year-old daughter, died in 2006 – a tragedy he marked by planting the burflower tree. He went on to channel his grief into a mission. “She meant so much to me. How could parents kill a baby girl in the womb?” He knew what used to happen in Piplantri when a baby girl was born. A family member would push a hard, jagged grain into her mouth. That would generally be enough to start an infection that led to the baby’s death.


But after Kiran’s death, Paliwal, the village chief, vowed there would be no more piteous wailing when a girl child was born. Henceforth, the birth of a baby girl would be celebrated by the planting of trees… read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/oct/11/my-daughters-memory-indian-village-where-every-girls-life-is-celebrated-trees-planted-piplantri-rajasthan

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