JAYSHREE KHARPADE 17,
USGAON, MAHARASHTRA Award- winning Filmmaker
A FILM AT 17 may not sound that big an achievement, till you realise Jayshree Kharpade’s father forced her out of school in Class II, so that she could work at a brick kiln. Fire in
Our Hearts, her 27- minute autobiopic, won first prize at the AsianAmerican International Film Festival in New York in July. In it, the tribal girl from Wada, 120 km from Mumbai, narrates her struggle to get an education.
Now in Class X at Eklavya Vidyalaya in Usgaon, 70 km north of Mumbai, Kharpade exudes the confidence of a girl determined to make up for lost time. “At 12, NGO Shramajeevi Sanghathana re- enrolled me in Class II,” she says. “I picked up so fast that my school allowed me to sit for the annual exams of Classes III- VI. I cleared them all.”
There’s no rancour at her father for pulling her out of school, though, in the film, she asks him why he forced her to abandon school. “Now,
baba wants me study further,” she says. Kharpade had not seen a camera until filmmaker Joyce Chopra of New York- based NGO BYkids visited her school in December 2010, and warmed to her story. Chopra encouraged Kharpade to shoot, and edited the film.
Her film’s success has sharpened Kharpade’s focus. She wants to be a civil engineer and build a school in her village, so that no girl is deprived of an education.
“JAYSHREE HAS PROVED THAT GIVEN OPPORTUNITIES, GIRLS CAN EXCEL IN STUDIES. SHE HAS AGREATABILITYTO GRASP COMPLEX IDEAS.”
Vivek Pandit, President, Shramajeevi
Sanghathana