September 7, 2007 is International Literacy Day.
(Over two-thirds of the world's 785 million illiterate adults are found in only eight countries (India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Egypt); of all the illiterate adults in the world, two-thirds are women; extremely low literacy rates are concentrated in three regions, South and West Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Arab states, where around one-third of the men and half of all women are illiterate.)
They also say that when you educate a man, you educate just one person; when you educate a woman, you educate an entire family. So true.
(The following is a true story told to me, by the illiterate, smart lady who has been our family's household help for the last 25 years.)
In her words, "It's the story of the five of us. And I was the youngest of the children.
It begins with the five of us. My parents, my two brothers and me. Father worked for one of the biggest Engineering Colleges in Mumbai, in the department that did repairs all over campus. When I was little, every evening,, I'd accompany him to the Market Gate, where he would buy some leafy vegetables, and then sit for a while, chatting to the cobbler, his friend. In the old days, the college was not so big, and there were fewer people. At sundown, the darkness used to frighten me.all those trees, chirping crickets, hissing slithering creatures, and I would clutch my father's fingers tight as I skipped along home with him.
My two older brothers were in school - the huge school near the Market Gate. I used to feel so proud to see them going off each morning in their blue pants and white shirt. Sometimes I felt like going myself. Aaiyo ! How would I wear those blue frocks ? Exposing the knees and skirts billowing in the breeze ? Aaai would be furious. So I used to avidly pour through my brothers' books, and pretend I was studying them.
Years passed, and both my brothers left school. One passed 10th grade, the other did not. I was married off to someone recommended by our relatives in the native village.
At first it was exciting; a new life, new energy, new places. I had five children. One after another. Four sons, one daughter.
The more I did, the more they asked. They said I came from the BIG city, Mumbai. Who did I think I was? And then I heard the stories about the drinking. Every day, at sundown, it was so different from back home. Then the beatings began.
Children cowering.
Seeing.
Learning.
How to live.
How not to live.
Then I heard about the Other woman. And decided I did not want to hear any more.
I confided in someone who worked in the textile mills in Mumbai and had come for a visit to the village. I asked him to tell my father and mother. That was the smartest thing I did.
My father and mother came. No words were necessary. The only words exchanged were with my husband's elder brother, who nodded. There were whispers, nods, fingers pointed at me, snide comments of other women folk. But my father carried my youngest, my daughter, in his arms, and asked me to walk ahead of him. With my mother, head held high.
I was back on campus. My children once again learned to be children. My father put them in the big school near the Market Gate. I started helping my mother, who worked as a household help in about four houses. She too was getting old. There were daughters-in-law in the house. They had their own households. So I took over my mothers work.
Like they say about the teachers in the college, when my mother grew old, she "retired".
Life has come full circle for me. My children, the sons, studied with the help of the uncles, indulged in by the grandparents, and I decided my daughter too would study, and get all the opportunities I never knew I could have.
This time it was my mother who supported me. My father was getting old. His sons were now working, one in the college and the other as a temporary worker elsewhere. So while I worked various houses doing housework and cleaning, my mother would wait to make fresh hot chappaties, for her granddaughter, when she came back from school. Looking on proudly as she struggled to do homework, sometimes with the help of her brothers, sometimes despite them.
And then came the day, I don't ever want to remember.my father collapsed one day on his way home from visiting a friend. He was rushed to the hospital. I ran all the way from working at someone's place, got my daughter from her school, and rushed to see my father. He was the one who had confidence in me, no doubt prodded and cajoled by my mother, who could see that my daughter should get opportunities I did not. My mother was "super-un-educated", but super smart otherwise. She sat stoically at his bedside, occasionally coming out when his friends from department at college, came to see him, surreptitiously wiping her tears and looking somewhere into the distance.
