Among other things, Bose uses rugby to teach them the value of team work, the need to go just a little ahead of the other girls if they want to move the ball ahead and score. Says Bose: “Sometimes, I have to simply spend a lot of time teaching them to walk straight with their heads held high, backs upright. It’s almost a pincer grip the girls are under. The fact of gender, and then being Muslim.”

Escaping this double-bind isn’t easy. Two Muslim girls stood first and second in the state Class X examinations this year. But, says London-educated doctor Anwar Amin Ansari, a Bandra resident, whose two daughters go to a convent: “Until the average Muslim family is not feeling secure, education, especially educating girls, cannot become a priority. In Muslim areas, there aren’t good government schools, sometimes none at all. The families are compelled to send them for a basic education in a madrasa or not at all.”

Many Muslims feel angry when asked the question of how women in the community are treated. Qayyum Ansari was pushed out of his chawl 13 years ago when a mob with torches came home. He says, “Will getting our women to abandon the purdah solve the problems of discrimination?”

But then what do you tell Farzana when she says: “Our men curse us and say it is because of our be-purdagi— shedding the veil — that we had to face the riots, even the July 26 deluge last year?”

... contd.