Author: Chandana Chakrabarti
Publication: Tehelka
Date: September 13, 2011
URL: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main50.asp?filename=hu170911PERSONAL.asp
WE GREW UP TOGETHER. We were about the same
age. We played on the sand mounds of a construction site.
Swarna was 11, like me. Every evening she
would meet me on the grounds, pushing a toddler in a pram. Swarna was employed
and I was in school. Her employers, mostly army officers, kept changing but
our paths kept crossing. Swarna was married before I finished school, and
a widow with two toddlers before I graduated. She married again - this time,
a physically challenged man - only to escape a harsh society 's advances,
even if it meant that she had a bigger mouth to feed and a bigger body to
clothe. She had a third child from her second marriage.
Swarna used to walk past my house, toddlers
in tow, hopping from one house to another serving her employers. It would
be several years before I would invite Swarna to help me out with my chores.
Such was our relationship that she could do mine at her convenience and we
would meet once a week. She saw me through the most difficult years of motherhood
and a demanding job. She even found time to lovingly feed my dying mother,
although she wasn't working for her anymore.
Before I knew, Swarna became my inspiration
for the energy she commanded - a maid at dawn, a cook by noon, a vegetable
vendor by evening, interlacing this with the role of a dutiful mother and
a housewife all through. She put all her three children to school. Her abode
changed from time to time from the staircase of a dilapidated house to the
verandah of another and then to a garage, each one open to the vagaries of
the weather and other unpleasant elements of a city. Tremendously frustrated
with her husband who never left home to earn a penny, she nevertheless managed
to motivate him to cook. Swarna never lost hope, neither did she despair.
The only time Swarna asked for a small loan
was to buy tin sheets for the roof of a hut she had built for her family.
A woman of great pride and dignity, she refused any offer that she considered
as charity. By the time my first-born was through with his middle school,
Swarna's eldest had an MCom degree and was on his second job. She got him
married to a bank employee and built him a two-room house with a borewell.
A tall young man and father of two, today, he heads a medical transcription
company with 200- odd employees under him. He has even bought himself a flat
and a car. Swarna's second went wayward for a while but she pulled him back
on the straight and narrow. Today he runs a shop. Her third, a chirpy daughter,
was already a graduate and fluent in English when I met her a few years ago,
raring to take on the world. Several years after I shifted home many miles
away, I called upon my dear Swarna. To my delight I found her living in a
pucca house - a three-room tenement. From a maid and a cook, Swarna had become
an entrepreneur. She serves idlis and dosa from a cart every morning to office-goers.
I am yet to take her up on her invitation for a breakfast at her joint.
When I was the chairperson of a ladies organisation,
every time there was talk about women who served as role models to society,
Swarna's face swam in front of my eyes. Every time a woman is honoured for
entrepreneurship, I am reminded that Swarna did not have such opportunities.
Was her contribution - dedication, devotion, hard work, sincerity, selflessness
and ingenuity - any less, I ask myself? The answer always has been - Swarna's
was greater. Why then do we not unearth the Swarnas of the world and hold
them up to the world as the real agents of change? Unless we learn to recognise
their contribution made under far more difficult and unbearable circumstances,
we would fail to make the point that the greatest human asset is hope and
hard work.
- Chandana chakrabarti Is 50. She is a writer,
actor and a social activist based in Hyderabad.
