My work does not end when I come
home. I have to buy rice, get firewood for fuel, cook food, and
take care of the children. I must walk half a kilometer to get
clean water. There are times when I think of ending my life. What
is the point of living like this? I am a woman; I am a Dalit;
I am a casual laborer, bound by destiny to suffer.
We are Dalits, the lowest strata of Indian society. We all live
on the periphery of the village, without land or any other means
of living except to work as casual laborers for those who have
land. Even farm labor is becoming scarce because of industrialization.
The higher caste people—those who own land—prefer
to cultivate cash crops, which are more lucrative and labor saving.
Lands that once grew rice, millets, pulses, and a variety of vegetables,
now mainly grow cotton, sugar cane, and other such cash crops.
Our parents got their wages in the form of food produce, so we
did not go hungry. Nowadays, we get cash. However, the landowners
also run the shops from where we buy rice and other provisions;
the person who gives money with the right hand takes it away with
the left. The shops also sell arrack and Coca Cola. Our children
want Coke when we do not even have clean drinking water.
I love Sasi, but I hate him too. I know why he is drinking; it
is too painful to be aware of one’s low caste status, to
always suffer humiliation from the higher caste people, to work
for low wages and not to be able to bargain for a better wages.
It is too agonizing to realize that nothing can be done to improve
one’s social and economic status. When Sasi comes home from
work, what awaits him except empty pots, sad and grumbling children,
and my tired and emaciated body? I have no way of letting him
know that there is a soul and loving heart within my own body.
But shouldn’t he know that I am also a human being, that
I too have lost dreams and that my soul and body ache? I cannot
tolerate this patriarchal insensitivity. I detest his sexual advances
in his inebriated state. And how can there be a sexual life in
a one-room crowded hut with children around, very little privacy
and a life situation where one is still hungry and thirsty both
for food and love? But I am equally torn by my responsibility
as a wife. Who else will give him love?
Almost half of our men have migrated to the cities to seek employment.
The city is a whore that attracts our men, offering them occasional
work. Some of the men will find new women and never return to
their wives. Others send money home, though they spend most of
it first on prostitutes and alcohol. The men often prefer the
city, where they have freedom to live anonymously without any
genuine ties. Occasionally, they may visit the village and their
homes, but their wives otherwise care for their families alone.
Thomas John |
