After he is gone…

It was around 8pm in the night. I was sulking as usual about making dinner, when a friend — also Rythu Swarajya Vedika volunteer frantically called me asking me to speak to a suicide farmer’s wife (who is also suicidal) at the earliest. I knew nothing about this lady, but considering the fact that her husband also committed suicide 6 years ago, I didn’t want to delay and instantly called her. Rajitha (name changed) picked up the call and I could hear a lot of noise in the background. I asked her where she is and she said she just got onto her scooty (In all the worry about her, I was also pleasantly surprised that she drives her own vehicle) and came out of home with no money in her pocket thinking she will not go back home (will commit suicide) and is driving aimlessly not knowing what to do. I requested her to stop driving and park her vehicle to a side and speak to me. I asked her what caused her to get so dejected that she decided to take her life and she started narrating…

Rajitha’s father died when she was a child. Not being able to carry the burden of feeding and caring for her for long, her brothers married her off at the age of 14. She had managed to clear her 10th standard exams but couldn’t study further because of lack of support. Her husband was a small farmer and she supported him with the agriculture work. Days went by and soon she had her first son. However things were already going downward spiral due to losses in agriculture and her husband incurred huge debts (around 5.7 lakhs) and committed suicide a couple of years later. She was 19 years old when her husband died. Rajitha remembers being devastated for around 6 months after his death. She was 8 weeks pregnant when that tragedy occurred but nevertheless decided to continue with the pregnancy and had a second child, another son. The burden of the entire family suddenly fell on her. Clueless and ignorant till then, she had to gather the broken pieces of her life and start everything afresh. Acute poverty, moneylender harassment, pregnancy, managing the family and a child suffering from lung disease — all of these she had to deal with at a tender age of 19. She remembers days when she couldn’t afford 2 meals for her children and they slept drinking decoction at night. She ran from pillar to post in the government offices desperately trying to get the ex-gratia money promised by the government for all farmer suicide families. She still hasn’t received a single penny from the government till date.

During that time, Rythu Swarajya Vedika (an organisation which works actively on all farmers issues) volunteers approached her family during a farmer suicide survey and after understanding her situation, facilitated some livelihood support for her with which she started a stitching and embroidery unit. If you think this is a happy ending, some respite to her (the victim) then you are mistaken!

Rajitha’s father-in-law started misbehaving with her and she was forced to relocate to another district and start her life afresh again. She learnt stitching and embroidery and soon she was working very hard day and night. With a lot of perseverance she improved her business and came to a position where she was able to even create livelihood for 3 other people under her. Life and its hardships forced her to become independent and learn everything from finances to negotiations with dealers to everything and she efficiently manages everything now. She also saved up enough money and constructed a house for herself taking a small amount of loan. She also repays the loans taken by her husband in instalments regularly. When I heard about this I felt very happy. Considering her background, where she came from, the limited exposure she had, whatever she managed to create for herself and for her children with little support is commendable. In all this she also managed to finish her graduation in distance learning...

After wading through one big hardship in her life, what lay ahead was another huge hurdle in the form of a social stigma she had to deal with. Rajitha’s work requires her to travel often to Hyderabad to purchase raw material with which she designs and stitches clothes and again sells them in Hyderabad. Seeing this, her in-laws soon started speaking filth about her to the people in her village. They started spreading rumours about she having an affair with someone in Hyderabad and she being otherwise incapable of managing to earn all the money alone. They denied any share in their property and disowned her. Today her children were insisting on meeting their grandparents so she had taken them to their place and they harassed her so badly that she couldn’t take it anymore and decided to end her life. It has been 6 years since her husband passed away and she says she cried badly today after 6 years. She drove around 80 kms away from home and didn’t realise. When I told her that it was around 9:30 pm at night, she was shocked that she has been driving for more than 2 hours and is around 80kms away from home. I managed to convince her that we will support her in every way possible and can also file a harassment case against her in-laws if need be and she need not worry. When I enquired if she had eaten anything, she mentioned that she hadn’t had a drop of water all day. I suggested she can stay back with someone for the night and go home the next morning and the mother in her suddenly realised her younger one wouldn’t sleep without her so she said she will have to rush back home. The conversation lightened a bit after that and she started back home. She said it would be around 11pm or so before she reaches home.

That one phone call with her and I wasn’t able to be normal after that. I couldn’t control my anger against injustice meted out to a woman who is already devastated and is trying to survive. Women still have it so tough. They still have to deal with consequences of the circumstances they were forcibly pushed into. Strong, independent, self-sufficient are still unacceptable images for a woman. “It is impossible to achieve all what she did without the presence of any “man” in her life” is still a common belief. Having a new relationship long after a marriage has ended/a spouse has died/exploring options/ catering to her needs are still forbidden sins which warrant humiliation and insults. Rural, urban, educated, illiterate — doesn’t matter. So many of us are victims to this regressive thought process imposed onto us in the name of moral policing. Rajitha started to cry as she spoke to me over the phone saying “I took care of them like my own parents, why are they still doing this to me”. I couldn’t possibly answer her question. Society and its constructs/impositions are what all women struggle with at some point or the other in their life — with some minor variations in degree. She said “Fighting circumstances wasn’t as difficult as fighting my own people and all the humiliation they meted out to me”. And this is the story of most women in our country even today.

Thinking of all this, I was reminded of something Bezawada Wilson said recently — “Our country is dealing with all sorts of shit in the name of gender/caste/class etc., discrimination, poverty, violation of human rights, lack of basic education, unemployment etc., and all the current government is fixated about is the place where a person shits. The prime minister goes to United Nations General Assembly and doesn’t speak about bigger problems plaguing our country and how they dealt with them, but promptly declares that India is Open Defecation Free (Which by the way is a big lie).”

Time to get our priorities right?