Laal Sooraj Ab Ugega

Tamne piliya thai gayu chhe. (You are having jaundice), this is how she greeted me that day , when I entered our community health clinic run in the slums of Khodiyarnagar, along the banks of the Sabarmati river in Ahmedabad. No, it did not come from the doctor in charge of the clinical diagnosis.  It was Annu, who detected my condition even before I went for a blood and urine test in the government run Infectious Disease hospital near Behrampur.  I was keeping unwell since the past few days, unable to eat well and hence feeling tired.  I had been consulting the doctors and was put on a heavy regime of antibiotics but the condition did not improve.  
Annu has studied till Std. VIII and is working with Sanchatana, the NGO with which I worked during the formative years of my professional career. Her knowledge stemmed from the long standing experience in implementing a community health programme, the thorough and consistent training curative and preventive health care, and the back breaking task of working with the communities in the urban slums to help them understand their health priorities.  Annu presented herself as an empowered, aware and enlightened health care worker in Sanchetana. 
Meet Habibunnisha, a resident of Allahnagar, a typical linear slum that has grown on either side of a single narrow lane. There is one exit cum entry point on either end of the lane.  Habibun belonged to a well to do family, but had eloped to marry after having fallen in love with the local tailor, Rajab.  Initially things went well and soon Habibun birthed three children.  However, with the increasing financial pressures, escalating demand for ready-made clothes, fall in the uptake of tailoring services, things started deteriorating at the home front.  Sooner than ought, domestic quarrels rooted in economics and fuelled by alcoholism became routine. As the days went by, the demands at home scaled high while the sources of income dwindled.  Domestic violence, battering of the wife and the children became the rule of life.  The punches, kicks and slaps continued.... day after day, night after night, till Rajab,  out of fatigue and frustration, would drop dead asleep. 

Being educated only up to the eighth standard, Habibun could not find a way ahead and secure betterment in the life of her children.  She started doing all odd jobs.  Her daughter and elder son joined her in her work of stringing the kites which was backbreaking, seasonal and non remunerable.  Whatever meager they earned was spent in buying daily supply of bare essentials while some of it was snatched away forcibly by the husband. 

One day, Habibun came in contact with the outreach team of Sanchetana who had come to her basti to talk of cervical cancer among women and intestinal worms in children.  She liked the meeting and waited for them to return.  A link was established between the NGO and Habibun.  Soon, she started facilitating the meetings in her locality.  She got noticed and was selected as a health worker in Sanchetana.  This job brought a better and secured source of income along with new knowledge and awareness about life.  However, things at home worsened.  The beatings increased and so did the drudgery.  It was a challenge for Habibun to work in the day time, stay away from her home and children, manage house work and face the tyrannical husband.  
During the field walks in the slums, Habibun met many more women like her, some even in worse conditions, like the one who after having faced violence at home had tried to commit suicide but was not too lucky, those whose bodies bore permanent burn scars and those whose wounds concealed a hundred unusual stories. And then, she met women who, with the support of Sanchetana, have alleviated themselves from their sufferings by breaking the silence and fighting against the socially accepted and unchallenged norms. 

That day was an usual one but made unusual by the grit and determination of Habibun.  In the morning, Rajab, in his usual inebriated state, battered her up.  She flung the dupatta (veil) across her head and marched determinedly to the nearest police chowki.  She forced the constable to register her complaint and came back to the basti with two on-duty police men.  That day, it was Rajab who was at the receiving end. The police beat him up, pulled him by his collar and walked him through the crowded road to the police station.  He was put in the lock up for one night and released the subsequent day. 

“When I was bringing the police into the basti, people thronged around me asking why I am doing this. What will I get out of all this? When Rajab was getting roughed up, my neighbours pleaded to me to withdraw the complaint.  The elders in the basti hurled insults at me for being a heartless and selfish woman. My own brother shouted at me saying, ‘you have defamed our family by handing over your husband to the police.  I shouted back, ‘Where were you all when I got beaten up everyday? Did that not hurt the family honour? Did anyone of you come out in my support at least once and ask him to stop the act? You all preferred to remain silent and deaf.’

Things changed forever after that one brave step she took.  Soon, she became an opinion leader in her slum and was consulted in routine matters and health issues in the basti. 

She would always reach late to the clinic. I overlooked the delay since she had three children at home, had to walk a long way from her slum and most importantly, was good at her work. But one day when the delay was beyond the acceptable limit, I asked her about what holds her back everyday.  
What she said was interesting enough, “Sudeshnaben, I am never late in my work. My work starts as soon as I step out of my house.  All along I meet people who need to be educated about healthy habits. I see pot-bellied children and talk of worms and malnutrition with their mothers. I meet pregnant women and so I stop to counsel them about proper diet, TT injections and IFA (Iron Folic Acid) tablets”.  (The routine office timings were not to bind her down).
I interjected, "but today you were late by 2 hours.  Why?"

“ Today I met me”.   

“What?” I said.

“ Today I saw another woman getting thrashed by her useless drunkard husband.”

“ So you must have gone to the police and fetched the uniformed men”.

“No. I went inside their kholi (shanty). And I intervened.  I talked to the husband and stopped him from beating her up”

“Must have been difficult! He must have been rude towards you for interfering in their personal household matter”

“Yes, he did.  But violence is never a personal affair and not limited to your own house.  Violence begets violence and soon, becomes a matter of concern for all. Had even one person stepped in my kholi and asked Rajab to stop beating my up, I would have never gone to seek help from the police”.

“I wish we all think like you.  It takes courage to raise your voice against injustice”.

Habibun was lovingly called as Annu by the staff at Sanchetana.  Her unabashed ways left me awe struck, always.  We often organized discussions with the community members on public health issues like Cancer, TB, Malnutrition etc.  Once, we thought of doing a talk with the youth.  It was seven in the evening.  The young men of the basti were available for the meeting in the evenings only.  Had it not being Annu, I would have never have had the guts to do sensitive exercises like body mapping with the men and had engaged in discussions on reproductive and sexual health and even on issues like rape and sexual assault.  From then on, our clinic earned a new status, that of a wellness center.  The barriers to communication were overcome.  People felt empowered to step in to discuss their general and specific health and family problems and end up sharing their life stories. 

People like Habibun are rare and hence precious.

(The names used in this blog are not fictitious. Annu believes in disclosing that she is a survivor of domestic violence.  In this way she feels that she can give strength to many women who live in peril everyday. She always says, "Agar maar nahi sakti ho toh kamse kam usse rok toh sakti ho!"... "If you can't hit him back, at least you can stop him from beating you")