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up with people during work. We weren't aggressive in our approach, we understood the psyche of the people to change them slowly. There was a law for the prohibition of the practice of child-marriages but still, the practice was rampant, our work was not only to stop it but also to find the reasons behind the practice, our main work was to eliminate those reasons. We had to protect the law without being too aggressive about it, without forcing people to adhere to it but slowly making people aware about its harms, and for the same purpose, we decided to use the medium of films. In short-film 'Daptar'I played the role of the grandmother who at the end of the film, stands against the societal norm for the protection of her granddaughter. This 30-minute short-film had a profound impact on Shirur-Kasara. Hundreds of children know literally every dialogue of this movie today. We had mounted a 55 inch TV on auto to show this movie in the remotest areas of the Taluka. Many villages didn't even have electricity to show this movie, in such cases we used an auto-rickshaw battery to generate electricity. One day we went to a village called 'Badewadi'. We were in a car and suddenly some kids started following us, our car stopped at the front gate of a school. Our team members asked those kids "Why are you guys running? Who is in the car?" The kids replied by saying 'Varsha Deshpande!' They asked them “How do you know her?” They immediately gave the reference of our short film! Asha workers had created 2 groups of girls in this village, one group was named after Savitribai Phule and the other one was named after me. Girls were free to decide the names of their groups. Girls had given names like Shivaji Maharaj, Shahu Maharaj to Kalpana Chawla, Sania Mirza and even the names of some political leaders. I felt like a celebrity in that village in that village because of our short film. Autorickshaw drivers use to roam in villages to show this movie and after the screening, they use to send us screenshots. After watching the movie, the girls were given notebooks to write what they thought about the movie. After reading those feedbacks, we were sure that we
