Parvathamma

I see Parvathamma, an old lady well into her 70s, originally from Tamil Nadu carrying sack loads of rice on her head. Those below poverty line are given rice at a highly subsidized rates of about 1-2 Rs per Kg in her State. Every month this lady visits her hometown, collects her share of the rice and brings it to Bangalore to sell it. Laden with these sacks on her head she boards the general compartment of the train, which is always so full of people that there never is enough air to breathe in there, travels without tickets with an occasional verbal abuse by the tt. Since our house is close enough to the Railway Station she carries these sacks, one on her head, the other with her hand, and walks all the way to our house, a distance of around one kilometer. She then sells this rice to people here at a rate lesser than the market price and earns some bit of money, probably enough to sustain herself. I wonder though, what is it that she really does with that money? She doesn’t buy anything for food. Mostly she eats whatever is given to her by my mother or my aunt, or even the neighbours. She helps around the house and does odd jobs, sweeping our small verandah, washing the terrace, carrying things from here to there. Whenever there is a function in any of the houses, she is usually called in to help with the dishes and other small errands that she runs. In return, she is given some money and lots of food. She sustains herself on that food. At times she even keeps them in our refrigerator and asks us to heat it for her when she wants to eat it. She hardly bathes, maybe once a month, that is if she does bathe. However, she never misses to bathe every time she comes back from a house where there has been death. Superstitions supercede poverty, health and sickness. She sleeps on my aunt’s terrace where she spreads her plastic mat, and covers herself with a bedspread. She washes her clothes outside my aunt’s house where there is some space and a tap, and dries her clothes on the same terrace. She has her own treasure of things, some coconut shells, and plastic bottles, and some others that I cannot fathom, that she spreads on our terrace for drying. Every once a month, or sometimes twice, she disappears with most of her treasures back to her hometown, and is back with sackloads of rice.

What is interesting, is that Parvathamma, who lives like a homeless in Bangalore - sleeping on our terrace or our verandah, has her own house back in her hometown. She comes from a village called Jolarpet in Tamil Nadu. She has her own house there and she only returns to her own place once or twice a month and prefers to spend the rest of the time like a homeless, doing odd jobs to earn small money and some food. The money that she earns is not great, maybe its just enough for her to get by or maybe she doesn’t even spend the money at all for that matter. I don’t see any expenses that she may incur, she gets free health check up at government hospitals and even free medicines. Then why does she go through the whole trouble of carrying those sacks on her head and bringing them all the way here every single time? That too at her age. Why does she prefer sleeping in the verandah or the terrace of somebody else’s house rather than rest in her own house at her age? She has a son, who is married and has children of his own. She has grandchildren whom she brings here once in a blue moon. Why does she not want to stay with her son and depend upon him for her sustenance at her age? She doesn’t. She continues to do what she does regularly, jumping at every opportunity to earn extra money, money that I have never ever seen her spend. She doesn’t even buy tickets for her travel after all. Why then do you think she goes through all of this trouble? Do you think its because of habit? All her life she has been used to doing something, anything at all for her sustenance. Of what I know of her earlier life, her husband died early, she has been around for nearly 20 years now, she was close to one watchman who also passed away, she put her son to school, had him educated and he now works back in Chennai. For as long as I have known her, she has been helping around with these odd jobs and ever since the public distribution system has begun in Tamil Nadu, she has been selling rice here. All her life, she has been compelled to work for survival, for the smallest need, and maybe this has stuck with her. I think she gets restless if she sits doing nothing for long, and there is this inner need to constantly be occupied. Maybe she will continue to do this all her life.