My seventeen year old daughter took a History of India class this semester.  Instead of a final exam, she wrote a paper on women in India.  She was swamped with SAT prep and studying for a horrid AP exam so I offered to help find some information for her.  I read a few scary statistics and ended up doing what I always do when researching anything.  I google imaged it.  Now my head is swimming in images of Indian slums and the women that live in them.

Girls born in these slums have no future, the statistics are dismal, but this is not what went through my mind as I was looking at these moments captured in a world so unfamiliar to my own.  Here is what I observed; these girls are beautiful and I don’t just mean aesthetically, although their physical appearance sometimes takes my breath away.  They have faces that speak of intelligence and strength. This amazes me.  How can poverty start out so beautiful and full of potential?  How can those faces turn into the tired and dejected faces I saw of the women holding hungry malnourished babies? This I suppose is the consequence when there is no opportunity and the tragedy of poverty.

This image was done in Prismacolor markers and watercolors on Bristol paper.