by Sudeepa Nair

Created on: February 05, 2009

Jamuna Bai
Its 5am in the morning, I have been up for over an hour now. If only the municipality could give us water during more earthly hours, I could have slept an hour or so more in the morning. But they seem to have a tyrannical joy in making us all get up almost two hours before dawn to perform the necessary chore of filling up water in all the buckets, drums, pots and pans available in the house. And what fun it is to wait your turn at the sole tap serving 20-30 households.

I almost finish cooking breakfast and lunch when my two kids stir in their bed. I am proud of them both. They won't be sleeping peacefully for too long though. I plan to send them both to a nice English medium school next year.
Pinky is almost four and smart too. She has learnt ABCD and 1-2-3 from the school-going kid at one of the houses where I work. Sonu older by two years, though not intelligent, is hard-working. This is what the memsahib herself had to say about my precious little ones. She also said that she could help me with the school admissions by talking to the principal who seems to be a friend of hers. I was overjoyed when she took me to the school, but when I spoke to the school manager my dream seemed to be only that, a dream. I was told that I will have to pay an initial amount of Rs 5000 and although, they could reduce the monthly tuition fees under a scheme for children of economically backward families. "Do you have any other qualifications'?" I looked at memsahib, puzzled and she explained that what they meant was any kind of caste certificate that proved that I am a scheduled caste. "No", I replied shaking my head.
My father had not thought about it when he ran away from famine and drought at a small village in Vidarbha towing his five kids, wife and ailing mother along with him. He brought us all up, got three of us girls married through his meager earnings as a vada-pav seller outside a Mumbai railway station. When he died, his vada-pav stall, a cane stool and an aluminium table with a glass case on top, went to my younger brother, who now stands at the same place where my father used to sell his wares.
My father was very proud of the match that he had found for me. My husband had a job at a factory and was earning nearly 2000 rupees per month as a casual laborer. He had taken a kholi of his on rent too, a 150 sq. feet room with a kitchen platform in one corner and a sink to wash at the other. I have tried my best to make my home look beautiful as much as I could

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