Munneshwari is married to Darkalaiyna, the
habitual drunk of the village. When he is sober he is a most loving father, and
hardworking husband - but when her gets into his drinking bouts, the little
money in the house vanishes and Munneshwari is beaten up well. Once when after another drunken row I asked her if she wanted to end the marriage, she would
not hear of it. I realized that she was concerned about the daughters, and that
despite all she actually loved her husband also.
She has taken him on, slap for slap during the drinking
bouts. She has railed at the drinking shop owner and told him to not give her
husband any drink on credit, and that next she will go to the police straight. At home she has saved
money from her husband to nurture her two daughters, taking care to stay out of
debt at any cost. She has protected the little money as best as she can,
and brought up the two daughters Nandini and Chendu into lovely wholesome
children. She steers clear of debts and manages as best as she can in very limited
money. They are landless, and also very poor.
For so long, like other village mothers, she had been seeing the children suffer cramping pains at night, but having to sell away every drop of milk without retaining any for the undernourished child as that was the only cource of income. Once I called Munneshwari and asked her how the children were.She said they were 'so well', since they had started on the milk and ashwagandhadhi, that Varalu had started giving the children daily in school. I asked her 'in what way' were they 'so well'. And she smiled down the phone saying ‘Chinadaaniki buggalu vachchesinayee' ('the little one has put on cheeks'), and 'they both eat well now, and their hunger is good.' How glad a mother's voice sounds when a child's health improves. That we should be living in a country where those who graze the cows and milk them, have no way to retain any for their own children ...
Recently when i asked after her daughter
Sindhu, and she said she was at her mother's place. And that she was saying
that she would study there itself, and that her own parents and brother also
wanted to keep her there and look after her. And in these hard times, it would
be one expense less. I asked her how she would bear the seperation, and she
sighed. Then i told her that we break our hearts over our children, but they
are quite happy outside our reach. She nodded, and said, 'Once they leave us,
their world is theirs'. Later I discovered that she had been diagnosed with
blood cancer and was keeping this information suppressed, and therefore the
probable reason to settle on child away.
Hard times
She and her husband
have been a very hard working couple on the tenency land they took on lease.
But, the fate of farmers …
Darkalaiyna had fever
the day I reached the village. He said that he had slept in the field last
three night as the boars were coming and nosing out all the plants. In these
times of drought the spare crop he had saved was very important. The next day
his daughter Nandini came home to ask me for some tea leaves and sugar, saying
that her father had high fever. My heart sank. The drought continues.
At
the slight rains, the people of the village have sowed groundnut
seeds often
purchased with borrowed money. They invest in deweeding, knowing that the
chances of crop failure are high. Munneshwari and Darkalaiyna said that
the groundnut (which last month he was protecting against wild boars by
staying on the fields at night with a fever) crop had withered away. Most
people who planted hoping against hope lost their crop - thus losing seed and
investment.
A little later she
told me how she the sugarcane they had invested on on tenency land had dried up
despite all efforts. There was a little water in the borewell, but as
Munneshwari said, the land was so parched, that the water from the bore would get
soaked into the dry land before reaching the crop. Anyway that bore also dried
up.
With no rains, there is hardly any grass to
graze for the cows. But the cows have to be grazed, milked (though the people
sorrowfully say that this is like drawing blood), as that is the only
small source of income. As all the borewells have dried up, water is carted at government cost and given at 8 pots per family per day, including all the cows
and people. A cow needs 3 pots of water a day !
She called up the
other day to ask if she can also make pickles to sell, as that will help her to
earn some money.
Milk
Every drop of milk in this village has to be
sold as that is the only meagre income for the families - and her own children,
as every other village child grow deprived of the milk. We started to buy her
milk to give milk to the school children, and pay her two rupees more than the
milk collection centre does.
Munneshwari's cow suddenly fell ill last week,
and they had to get the local vet down. The vet made three trips over two days,
and each vist cost 500/-. the savngs disappeared, and also the next month's
milk income was bartered away as she took a loan. She told me that for this reason
she cannot sell us her milk ...
2015 –
They bought a tractor load of straw for
10,000/-. I asked her where she got the money from, and she said somehow she
got it from Banakadapalle. i asked her what the interest was and she said 5/-
(Per month. Which is 60% p.a.). There is not even water for the cows, and the
tractor gives limited number of pots of water per home per day from the one
live bore in the panchayat. So she leaves water pots in everyone's home, and
they pour the water from washing rice into it, and the rice starch, and that
she collects and manages for one round of drinking for the cows.'
Against all odds she protects her cows as only
that will help her sustain her children. I had told her to not sell away
her cows in the drought and to ask for any money or loan. When I asked her
again a few weeks later on phone, I faced the usual cheerful voice, and
honesty. 'We are manageing. It rained yesterday, and in two weeks there should
be some grass. Yes, yes, when I need I will surely call you. Nandini had such a
nice time in Madras. How is Saar ? How is Turiya ? When are you coming ?' Some
urban people think that the poor will take advantage if help is offered. i have
seen only the contrary behavior. They maintain dignity and honesty - first and
foremost.
With such a standing offer, she came home with 4000/- and said that that was the milk money she had got, and with another 5000/- she get get a load of fodder for the cows. She could have asked me for 9000/-, she knows - but she did not. They are all like that.
And when I tell her to ask when she needs any expense for her daughter's studies, she simply asks for one uniform set. When I ask her if she would not need two, she says the previous year's set is only slightly small.
When I tell her that she should not distress sell her cow, and would she need money for fodder, she says that the slight rains have given some grass cover, and she will not need any now.
She also told me this
time that she has been diagnosed with blood cancer, but kept the fact from even
her husband. She goes to the Cancer Hospital with her brother every month. She
has two small girls. That smile though has never left her face in all the years
I have known her - close to twenty now.
(The tanker usually comes at mignight because that is when the three phase current is there. When I grumbled Munneshwari remindedme that we lose 1/2 hour of sleep at night, while the tanker driver loses the nights sleep night after night ...)
Munishwari, with an incurable condition, has been told by her allopathic doctor that she may live a year. Husband is a drunk, The elder daughter, 14 years clings to her. She knows everything. The younger daughter she has sent away to her mother and younger brothers to grow up in their care.
She works tirelessly. Feeding the cows, milking the cows, planting ragi, deweeding.
When i call up to ask her how she in, she tells me in her cheerful tone, with never a wrinkle in the tenor, "I'm very well." On more probing she admits that her heaches are severe. And on more questioing that she forgets her medicines in the middle of all her works. And then i come down to earth, and realize how frivolous my own complaints, my worries, and my tiredness is. And from her I draw energy and direction afresh.
13 April 2016 at 10:26 ·
Its just a number for us. Faceless people.
Munishwari, Paalaguttapalle (Dalitwada), needs rest. She is ill. When I called up now she admitted to missing her medicines, saying she was busy labouring in the ragi fields, and at home her husband stays drunk, and she forgets the medicines. The work cannot stop as debts need to be repaid. So medication stops, and the health which was improving slides back. I watch helplessly.
This is how the rice and the ragi and the dals that come onto our plates come. Farmers working themselves to the bone, and sometimes getting pushed over the edge.
Maybe love works.
I spoke to Munishwari, whose health has slipped back due to overwork, and thus missing medicines. But when i asked after her husband Darkalaiya, she said he's not been drinking last two months ! In the 20 years I have known him, and over which time he has greyed and I have greyed, I have not known him give up drink. He's a fine person generous to a fault, but a drunk. And his wife and daughters have suffered.
But Munishwari sounds convinced he has kicked the habit. I asked her sceptically why. She said his daughters are growing up, and as their marriage years will approach the father's dignity matters.
I spoke to Darkalaiya and he said he has stopped totally. . I told him that after 3 more months, if he has not touched a drop, I will get him his false teeth fitted. He's been telling me for awhile that I meed to do it for him, and I've brushed him off telling him to first stop drinking !
Maybe the father's love for his daughters will work, where all else has failed. I think it will. I hope it will
Reposting ... India has her own ways of addressing problems. Which may not fall in standard 'isms'.
Within feminism, we should have advised Munneshwari to walk out of the marriage with her drunk husband.
Seeing her two daughters, she chose to move on in the marriage - time and again in protest moving to her parents place from where her husband would beg and bring her back. When not drunk he was one of the finest people - kindest and most generous.
Her daughter Nandini grew to ten years. She is the apple of her father's eye and now she is taking him on. When he got into a drunkn brawl last month she completely stopped talking to him. The mother and other sister also stopped talking to him, and they would just cook for him, and place the meals aside. After the fourth day of this, the father came to Nandini and wept, and said he would leave drinking ... and that he could not bear to be isolated thus.
Now the three women will take on the stuggle against drunkenness .. of a beloved father.
Paalaguttapalle (Dalitwada)
Indian reality, rural reality is too nuanced to be boxed into ideological compartments, and so are the answers.
Women who deal with drunken husbands, without walking out on the marriage, except in extreme cases - sometimes these women go a mile beyond modern feministic notions. Because two small children exist within the shelter of that marriage and because their own security also is in a sense compromised were they to stay alone - and somewhere because the human heart is a complex place, and I suspect there is also love for the husband many a time. Within these various realities they have to operate.
Munneshwari, has brought up two lovely girls, while being married to our village drunk Darkalaiyna. When sober he is one of the hardest working men, he dotes on his two daughters. He has a generosity of spirit I have rarely seen. But he gets drunk more and more when that devil gets into him. Munneshwari responds by keeping the money as safe as she can. She works hard herself . When her husband comes home drunk, she asks him to stay out, sleep it off and come in. When he hits her in a drunken brawl, she hits back. She has taken on the bootlegger and told him to stop giving drink on credit, and that next she will place a police complaint.
I have watched this chit of a girl, married, and bring up two children rooted in goodness and cheer. And I have seen these girls now be her support, and take on the father when he is drunk. I have seen the father who dotes on them, apologise to them in tears and swear to go off drink.
But, no, there is no 'happily ever after', where he swears off drink. The sags goes on with its ups and downs. But ... In early years, with the presumtiousness of a city person trying to 'help', I had advised Munneshwari to walk out of the marriage. She did not. And if she had with two small children, even with 'my support', i do not think it would have been the wiser choice.
Munneshwari is wise and stronger than the self proclaimed feminists I have known. Society and we have let her down by not making the struggle against drink our own.
Heart rending. Inspiring. Humbling. Depressing. Uplifting. Humane. All at once. May the human spirit win over the travails of life.
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