Kabul Terror Attack Victim Took Up A Posting Others Were Scared To Take Up

Rajesh Tandon bears the intrusion with a smile. He even allows photographs. "Martha would've wanted us to be normal. Let us be normal," he stoically tells TOI at his Sarita Vihar residence. Tandon's wife, Martha Farrell, one of the four Indians killed in the terrorist attack in Kabul on Wednesday, had signed up for a project in Afghanistan after several others had turned it down.
An expert on women's empowerment, Farrell was running a series of workshops on "gender mainstreaming" in Afghanistan for locals and government officials. It wasn't the safest place in the world and security threats caused several delays in the project run with Aga Khan Foundation. But as Tandon says, Martha did what she felt she had to do.

"She was fearless and committed to supporting the people," he says, adding with stunning clarity, "This kind of attack could've happened anywhere, even here." Farrell's body was brought to Delhi on Friday.
The 55-year-old was one of the directors at Participatory Research in Asia (Pria), an organization Tandon founded in 1982 and her sudden passing leaves several of its initiatives temporarily rudderless.
Farrell had friends in Kabul. In her last email to her son, Suheil, she told him she was going out to meet one of them. According to information from Kabul, she was in the dining hall of the guest house ¡ª where she had stayed before ¡ª at the time of the attack.

"A trip in January was cancelled for security reasons, election and post-election unrest. But we were called now and foreigners stay only in hotels that fulfill UN's security norms," says her colleague Manoj Rai. Despite the constant risk, Farrell persisted. The Afghan women needed her.
Farrell was one of those few citizens who recognized that to counter gender violence, you have to start with boys and men. Pria's Kadam Badao (step forward), launched in Sonepat, Haryana, was meant to address just that.

AFP

"It is meant to prevent violence in public spaces ¡ª wherever girls are beaten or molested," explains Tandon, "That was her dream."
Born in an Anglo-Indian joint family living in Kashmere Gate ¡ª one of eight siblings ¡ª Farrell learnt fast that the needs of girls aren't priority. "Tutoring schoolchildren saw her through college," says Tandon. She studied English at Indraprastha College and collected a master's degree in Delhi School of Social Work. She had founded adult education organization, Ankur, and met Tandon for the first time in 1981 when he evaluated her work. In 1984, they met again at a PRIA programme and "started going out".
Farrell started on her PhD, on sexual harassment at the workplace, only after she had raised their son and daughter. Jamia Millia Islamia University awarded her a doctorate in 2012. She had trained thousands of women panchayat members in leadership, worked on adult education, distance learning and was adjunct faculty at Royal Roads University and University of Victoria.
"Gender rights was her passion," adds Rai, who has worked with her for 20 years and was supposed to travel with her to Kabul. Farrell was also known for her near-legendary hospitality. "Anyone who's ever been hosted by her...," says Rai and runs out of words to describe that experience.
Farrell organized their contributory office lunches, divided employees into teams and decided who had to bring what. All holidays were observed in the Tandon-Farrell home with parties and food. "She was Anglo-Indian but had completely mastered the cuisine of the Uttar Pradesh Khatris," says Tandon. Every corner of her Sarita Vihar living room bears her touch ¡ª masks, artwork, charms, wind-chimes, tables, lamps and hangings collected from across the world. "She brought something back from every place she visited."

She was more restrained with her office at Tughlaqabad Industrial Area ¡ª two tins of coffee, a scarf from Zambia on the door and a paper necklace on the door-handle.

A gunman stands guard after the attack/AFP

Survivors rushing out of the guesthouse after the attack/AFP

Originally published in Times Of India