Idyllic Villages?

8th October, 2013

Villages are often described as idyllic; but somewhere beneath the beauty lays an ugly face. I am not trying to make a generalization here, but I’ve experienced things in 2 out of 3 villages, which changed my perception of a village.

In Pandhrigota, we were staying with Panchu Phoolkawar’s family. When we entered the house on the first day, I saw Aji sitting in the verandah, making bundles of grass. She was busy with her work and did not even look up once. In the evening, I started talking to her but she didn’t understand Hindi or Marathi. She was interested in speaking and was trying to convey something. I decided to listen to her and see if I could make sense of what she was trying to say.

Aji told me that she was being forced to work by her daughter in law, for her daily meals. If she didn’t work, she wouldn’t be fed. For an hour, she was talking about how her back aches and how the grass pricks her fingers, but she couldn’t do anything about it. I didn’t know what to do, so I tried to help her in the best way I could, by giving her an Iodex for the pain.

Aji looked at the bottle with curiosity, opened it and took a whiff and gave it back to me. She went to her bed and brought out a bottle of oil. She made motions with her hand and indicated that she used it to rub her back. After placing the bottle back carefully, she got back to work.

The group decided to go out for a walk and I saw a woman, who was looking at us curiously. We smiled at her as we were passing by but suddenly, she started shouting something. We were scared that we offended her in some way, but somebody came up and told us that she was a “mental patient”.

How could that be I asked? In the morning, I had seen her sweeping the verandah of her house as she was brushing the teeth and I had seen her come to the well to collect water, too. He had a strange expression on his face and just said, “Toh kya hua?”

Later in the night, while talking to other women, we managed to get to know about her. The woman was abandoned by her husband because she had several miscarriages and could produce an offspring. She had returned to her parent’s house, deranged and beaten up.

The point I am trying to make here is that nobody sits idle in the village. By choice or otherwise, they work and they work hard. Old age, illness or anything for that matter, is not an excuse good enough to stop working.