#020 WOMEN'S TRAVAILS

My maternal grandmother used to ask me to write her biography. Her life was full of hardships and travails. The episodes in her life can fill not one novel, but ten novels. I did not, unfortunately, had/have the skills to elicit before her death the full details with emotional content. It is my failure.

She was the wife of an Indian freedom fighter who lost everything in his activities, owing to neglect of the traditional occupation of agriculture. They had 60 acres of land, she said. They lost everything. My maternal grand father died before the Indian independence i.e. 1947. My gm was illiterate. She could not produce to the Government authorities evidence of his going to jail, and claim some pension of a freedom-fighter's family.

My gm was left with three daughters and three sons to bring up. She had no alternative but to migrate from the village to a town and eke out a living by working as a domestic cook in the houses of rich. She used to work nearly eighteen hours a day. She and her eldest son, his family used to live in a hut, beside our hut. She, suffering from body pains, used to lie down on 'sides' and ask me to stand on her and stomp on her back (I was 14 at that time), waist, and legs with my feet. This gave her some relief from pain.

Why my grandmother? 90% of Indian women undergo severe hardships in their lives. These sufferings may be the result of the social environment or the acts of husbands and grown up children.