Mumbai – the land of dreams. Every year, thousands of people step foot in the city to test their fate. Every sunrise
brings opportunities, and every sunset takes some away. Eventually, many succeed and many fail. And yet, the city has
never lost its charm.
But not far from here, was a place that had never seen the likes of the light of Mumbai; a small village that lay where
the light faded into shadows – Anandgaon.
There was a kutcha road that connected the village to the highway, followed by a tar road that was last repaired during
some panchayat election. The village was a small interconnected spread of dirt roads lined with fields and a few shops
by the main road. The majority of the people were farmers. Some had sent their children to the city, who laboured away
their days and sent their sweat-money home.
Just beside the pond stood the old building of the local school. It had classes from 1st to 10th. Almost all kids in the
village who had gone to school had graduated from this one. Hardly anyone went past matric, and if they did, they went
to some better off school in Madhigaon or away in the city.
The households in Anandgaon were all more or less similar. Three, sometimes four, generations lived together in a house
slightly too small to fit them all, while the men broke their backs sustaining the livelihood. Some women made pickles
or dyed clothes to help with the expenses. Little children helped their families in the fields. Teenagers either spent
their afternoons idling away at the square, or toiling at the shops by the road, or committing themselves to farm-work.
The ones out of school who were still in the village would wander around revolutionary ideas like going for a higher
degree, before indulging themselves in fields, shops, or the post office, and starting their own families in the
village.
So, you see, there was pretty much nothing that could break the flow of things in Anandgaon. The people were content, if
not happy; what more does one need to live in peace?
***
In the street behind the temple, lived the most notorious bunch of children. Every evening, they would gather under the
sprawling shade of the banyan tree and play all sorts of games. Hide-and-seek, ice-water, tag, and after some passerby
would scold them for almost getting knocked down, they would ultimately settle by the tree and play make-believe.
“I will be the doctor,” a boy said.
“No, I will,” said the other.
“No, I!”
“No, I will be the doctor!”
The bickering stopped suddenly at the voice of who had spoken. The boys started laughing.
“No, you can’t. You will be the mother.”
The girl frowned.
“But why?”
“’cause we can’t be the mother, silly!” The boys started laughing again.
“I can be both,” she said.
The boys didn’t like it.
“It doesn’t work like that,” one boy said. “All the doctors in the dispensary are men. You can’t be a doctor.”
“I went to the hospital in Madhigaon once,” said the girl. “The doctor there was a lady.”
“You don’t know anything,” the boy said. “If you want to play, you’ll have to be the mother.”
The girl got up.
“I’ll only play if I’m the doctor,” she announced, and ran away towards the pond. The water splashed around as the waves
from a pebble broke the calm across the surface.
This was Nandini. Six years old, no more different from the rest of the bunch. She wore patterned skirts, tied her hair
in pigtails, and adorned a small bindi on her forehead, much like her other friends. And yet, there was something in her
dark brown eyes that made her different.
She was only in second grade, and one of the brightest kids of her class. Like any other kid, the world outside school
fascinated her more than any subject, but her mother was always behind her back to study well.
“Nandu,” she would say lovingly, caressing her while they lay beside each other at night time, “study well, won’t you?”
And little Nandini would giggle and tuck herself in her mother’s pallu.
She had told her once, when the headmaster had found her idling by the mango tree during class hours, that she should
study a lot. Her mother had only gone to school till class two, and didn’t remember much of what she had studied. She
said she would persuade Nandini’s father to let her go till class eight, and if she studied well, maybe even class ten,
who knows.
Nandini’s friends didn’t believe it.
“What about when you get married?”
She shrugged.
“Ma said I should study.”
“Would your mother-in-law send you to school?”
She shrugged again.
At home, she would help her mother and aunts with chores. She was used to seeing them in the kitchen from the moment she
opened her eyes, lighting the chulha with the first rays of sun, only coming out to relax by the doorstep in the
afternoons when the men were in the fields. Her father and uncles were all farmers. Her grandmother would sit by the
charpai in the aangan, taking care of the little kids. Two of her cousin sisters were already married. One of the older
cousins worked in the city, other elder cousins helped in the field. She, and the others of her age, would help running
errands around the house.
Her mother used to fall sick often. On such days, her aunts would want her to skip school and take care of her.
“No,” her mother would say between bouts of coughing. “Nandu will go. I can care for myself.”
And so, she would never let her miss a single day of school.
The aunts didn’t understand her obsession with sending the girl to school. It wasn’t like she would become an officer
after studying. In a place so set in its ways, Nandini’s mother was often seen as stubborn, arrogant or eccentric. But
her firmness had always shielded Nandini from the ways of the world.
As fate would have it, Nandini’s mother passed away a few years later. The women-force in the house was down by one.
Much had gone in the tuberculosis treatment, and mouths had to be fed still. Nandini was pulled out of school before she
could graduate class six.
Nandini’s world came crashing down.
With her mother gone, the responsibility of her well being fell on her father and aunts. Her father was always busy
trying to make ends meet, and rarely had time for her. Her aunts, on the other hand, had their hands full with looking
after their own children. For the first time, Nandini found herself in the middle of household politics.
In the mornings she would wake up early and assist the ladies in cooking and washing. She would sweep the aangan, fetch
water and bathe the younger children. While the women cooked, she would knead the dough, dust the quilts, and carry
dried stacks of cow dung. Once the kitchen chores were done, she was sent to feed the cattle and milk the cows. In the
afternoons she would winnow the grains, and fan the fire for dinner. The evenings were spent in fetching fodder and
lighting lamps. Her hands were falling in the tune of the routine that had shaped the generations before her.
When all the work was finished, she would lie down on her mattress, trying to feel her mother’s embrace, like a distant
memory she was struggling to keep with her.
“Nandu,” her mother’s gentle voice would echo in her ears. “Study well, won’t you?”
Sometimes, in the evening, she would steal a glance at her cousins’ books. They would sometimes talk to her about what
was up in school, before the aunts called her in for some chore. And that was all she could gain about school.
Years passed, as Nandini grew into a young woman of fifteen. She now bore a stark resemblance to her late mother. By
now, her hands had been roughed down by the cooking and washing. Her fingers had forgotten how to hold a pen.
“Nandini,” her father called one day from the aangan. “Prepare some sweets today. I have found a groom for you.”
‘So they are going to get rid of me after all,’ she thought to herself as she stirred the pot of kheer. In the years
that had gone by, it had been made very clear to her what a burden it was to raise her.
“Who is it,” she asked her father that night when he sat down for supper.
“Chandan. His father owns the shop at the main road.”
Her heart sank. Of course, she knew Chandan, everybody knew him.
He must be at least twenty years older to her, and had had a wife before. His wife died with his child during
childbirth. At least that is what he kept saying to everybody. He was missing an eye, and sat all day at the square
gambling and rotting away.
Nandini’s throat tightened. She wasn't going to marry him. Certainly not.
One night, a week before her wedding, while the family was asleep, she packed her stuff in a peti and quietly stepped
out of the house. She was running away.
She had barely reached the pucca road when she heard someone calling her name.
“Nandini! You ungrateful girl!”
It was her uncle chasing after her. Apparently, a neighbour had seen her and alerted him.
She quickened her pace, running as fast as she could, but he caught hold of her. Dragging her by her arm, he took her
back to the house, where her aunts and father were waiting for her. Once home, she was locked in a room and beaten and
thrashed by her eldest aunt, while her cousins watched from the window. Thereafter, she wasn’t allowed to leave the
house.
A week later, Nandini and Chandan’s wedding took place without any show. There wasn’t much dowry involved since Chandan
also had a limp alongside a missing eye.
If life in her paternal home was difficult, life at Chandan’s house was a living hell. Chandan was a useless fellow, who
wasted away playing cards at the square, while Nandini struggled to manage the household. His father’s shop was the only
source of earnings, a large portion of which Chandan gambled away. His mother never said a thing to her son, although
she often took it out on Nandini, as if her son’s utter failure in life was her fault.
But it wasn’t the situation of the household that bothered Nandini so much. She had gotten well versed with the ways of
household politics.
At nights, Chandan would come home late, smelling of cheap liquor. Then he would lock himself in the room with Nandini,
who would often pretend to fall asleep just to get rid of him. He would shake her by her shoulder, demanding she listen
to his drunken complaints. Often, he would not bother with words. He would get on the bed, pressing his body against
hers, reeking of alcohol and gripping Nandini’s wrists, while she shut her eyes and waited for it to be over.
One evening, he came home, late and drunk as ever. He had lost money gambling again.
“Food,” he called as he stumbled into the house.
Nandini appeared with a plate of rice, her gaze low, and disappeared again into the kitchen.
“Nandini,” he called drunkenly, “won’t you come sit with me?”
Nandini, knowing what was to come next, ignored him.
“Nandini… Nandini,” he called lovingly.
She ignored it again.
“Nandini!”
Suddenly there was anger in his voice. He went to the kitchen limping and grabbed her by her hair.
“Are you deaf?”
“Leave me!” she shouted, as he pulled her outside dragging her by the hair.
Before she could stop it, he threw her towards the wall. Her head hit the hard surface as she screamed and a stream of
red flowed across her face.
It was difficult to say whether her mother-in-law was still sitting in the aangan or not. Regardless, she screamed for
help.
Chandan picked her up by the wrist, twisting it behind her back.
“Listen to me when I call you, understand?” he said, and threw her back to the floor.
That night, she sat in front of the mirror, tending to her wounds. She looked at herself, and couldn’t believe her eyes.
Her mother was looking back at her.
“Maa,” six-year old Nandini had asked, “What happened to your face?”
“Nothing,” her mother had said, adjusting her pallu and hiding her bruise.
A few days later, her mother-in-law gifted her a bracelet. Nandini was pregnant.
***
“Study well, Nandu,” her mother said, caressing her lovingly. But the mother was not Nandini’s mother, it was Nandini
herself.
She woke up in a cold sweat, her hand on her belly.
Her past had come to face her again. And this time, it was here to take more than just herself.
A few hours later, she found herself in the school headmaster’s office.
“You look just your mother,” he said with a warm smile. He still had the kind gaze he did when she was in school.
“I want to study,” she said.
The headmaster’s brow furrowed.
“You do?”
She nodded.
“What about your husband?”
“He’s never at home.”
“Your in-laws?”
“I’ll handle them.”
“School is of six hours.”
She hesitated.
He smiled.
“You don’t have to come here every day,” he said. “You can study at home and come for the exams.”
“Will they allow that?” she asked, almost to herself.
“Will they stop you?” the headmaster countered.
Nandini thought of Chandan’s drunken nights and of her mother-in-law’s cold indifference. She thought of the walls that
had seen so much, and couldn’t care any less.
No, they wouldn’t stop her. Because they wouldn’t even notice.
Outside, the school bell rang, releasing a stream of children into the yard. Nandini watched them, and for a moment, she
saw what her mother had wished for her.
In the months that followed, she committed herself to her new-found books. The stolen hours of dusk and dawn became her
sanctuary.
Her mornings began a little earlier than before. Before the house stirred and before the first cough of her
father-in-law, she would slip into the space between the grain sacks and the kitchen wall with lamp. She hid her books
beneath an old shawl. Her sacred secret. Their pages were worn at the edges from too much folding. She traced the
letters with her fingers, whispering words under her breath.
In the beginning, it was difficult. Her hands, used to kneading dough and scrubbing floors, fumbled over the curves of
letters. The words seemed like a jumble of some alien language and the numbers twisted her mind.
But she persisted.
For Chandan’s family, nothing had changed. The house had its rhythms and Nandini had learnt to move within them. But
now, as she cleaned the courtyard floor, she would revise science concepts in her head. As she rolled chapatis, she
would practice multiplication tables.
“Study well, won’t you?”
And slowly, things began to change.
The words no longer ran away from her. The numbers began to stay. Her hands grew firm as she started forming letters
with ease.
But days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. With every passing day and her growing belly, it was becoming
difficult to give time to her books.
Before she could completely understand polynomials, it was time for the baby’s arrival. Between her mother-in-law’s
muttered prayers and the stunned silence of Chandan, the baby opened its eyes. It was a girl. Much less to her surprise,
there wasn’t any celebration. No one said anything to her, but she could read the silence. Outside, she saw that Chandan
had thrown away the sweets he had bought.
With the arrival of the baby, her life began to change.
Days and nights were spent in feeding, cleaning, and shushing the baby, lest it anger Chandan. She took every care to
never let the baby be in the same room as him alone. One time he woke up in the middle of the night and charged straight
at the wailing baby in Nandini’s lap. She jerked him away and gave him such a ferocious glare that did something only
the two of them knew.
With the child clinging to her all day long, her books became a forgotten memory. For months, they lay untouched beneath
the shawl. But when the baby started crawling, she realised that she couldn’t let the walls of the house confine her
daughter.
So, she dusted the books and started again. Between feeding and chores, she squeezed in time for studying. In the cover
of her pallu, while the baby suckled at her breast, she would pick up her textbook and read. At nights when her baby
would refuse to sleep, she would sometimes recite her half-broken formulas and sentences from her book that she
memorised during the day, and watch as her eyes drooped to a peaceful sleep.
And so, it went on. Gradually, the baby started blabbering, and then walking. Her ways changed, but her will was
stronger than ever.
And finally, the day came. The day of her matric exam.
She stood at the school gates, her heart pounding. She had said at home that she was going to the temple, leaving the
baby in the care of her mother-in-law, who followed her with suspicious eyes outside the doorstep.
Her breath was heavy. Would she be able to do it?
“Study well, Nandu, won’t you?”
With great determination, she stepped inside.
***
Her hands trembled as she held the marksheet. The numbers stood bold and proud against the paper. She had done it. She
had passed with flying colours.
She looked at her child, now all of two years, sitting on the school bench, giggling and playing with the edge of her
pallu. She pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“For you,” she whispered. “Always for you.”
With her marksheet tucked into the folds of her sari, she made her way home. Her steps felt lighter than usual. For the
first time in a long while, they held purpose.
She stepped into the house deciding whether she would make kheer or halwa. The family had always liked halwa more. Today
she will prepare kheer.
But inside, something was wrong. There was silence. Heavy. Unnatural.
Her mother-in-law sat in the aangan, her face dark with disapproval. And then her eyes fell on the ground.
Her books lay scattered. Pages torn, covers bent. Her secret was exposed.
Chandan stood in the doorway. The fury in his eyes stung her from a distance.
Her heart sank.
Chandan steadied his limp and took slow, deliberate steps towards her.
"You've been going to school?"
He kicked one of the books lying at his feet and sent it skidding across the floor.
Nandini pressed her baby harder against her chest. "I only wanted to—"
His hand cracked across her face. She staggered, catching herself against the doorframe.
Before she could think, Chandan’s fist struck her shoulder, sending her crashing to the floor. She tasted blood in her
mouth. Her child wailed in her arms. Her mother-in-law grabbed the baby from her grasp.
"No!" Nandini screamed, reaching for her baby, but Chandan’s foot landed on her wrist. She felt a crack as pain shot
through her arm.
"You’ve been lying to us," Chandan seethed, crushing her arm with his good foot. "And for what?"
She groaned in pain. Pages from her textbooks lay strewn on ground smeared with dust. Her baby wailed and called her
from her grandmother’s arms.
Chandan spit on the floor. “No more books. No more school. You’re not leaving this house again,” and he walked towards
the charpai and sat down heaving.
Pain throbbed through her body, but she did not cry. She got up. Her legs trembled, but she steadied herself and took a
deep breath.
It was time. She was leaving. And this time, she would go in broad daylight, not run away like a thief.
She walked to her mother-in-law. "Give me my child."
"Or else?"
Nandini met her eyes with a gaze that said she could set the world on fire, and she meant it.
The old lady loosened her grip. Nandini took her child into her arms and shushed her. Then she walked into the house,
picked all the stuff that she could get her hands on, threw it in a bag and walked out.
“Where do you think you are going?” Chandan called after her.
“Away. Stop me if you can.”
He lunged forward, furious, and grabbed her. With the elbow carrying her bag, she struck a sharp blow into his ribs and
sent him crashing to the ground across the aangan.
“You crazy lady!” her mother-in-law cried as she went to pick up her son.
Nandini, now at the doorstep, did not look back. As Chandan hurled abuses from the ground, she, with her daughter,
stepped out into the sun that now shone bright.
***
Months had passed since she had caught the bus to Madhigaon with nothing but a bag and her two-year-old daughter, and a
grit that was stronger than ever.
Now, she was here.
The small rented room smelled of old paper and warm milk. A stack of books lay beside her cot. The wooden desk she sat
at was rickety, the ink in her pen cheap, but it did not matter.
She was studying for her inter.
By day, she taught the younger classes at the school. It wasn’t much money, but it was enough to keep the roof over
their heads. At night, once her child was asleep, she studied under the glow of a borrowed lantern.
In the years that had gone by, she had seen things beyond her age. She had seen her mother, and her aunts, and Chandan’s
mother, whose lives began and ended and never went beyond, the walls of the house. And herself, who narrowly escaped
that fate.
She couldn’t let another Nandini be.
And so, she tried.
In hushed conversations at the well, she spread the word. “Come,” she would tell them, “I will teach you.” No fees, no
formalities. Just a few hours every evening.
“What’s the use?” they said. They had families, they were content. What possibly could be the use of learning the ABC’s?
And so, no one came. But she waited.
Every evening, outside her house, she would spread a mat and arrange some slates, and dust the old writing board that
she had picked up from school. Then she would bring a chair and wait.
“My husband will never allow it."
"Who will finish the housework?"
"If my in-laws find out, there will be trouble."
Eventually, the sky would turn red and the birds would begin to fly home. Nandini, tired of waiting, would pick her
stuff up and go home.
But the next evening, she would return. And the evening after that, and the one after that. This continued for weeks.
One evening, when the winters were just setting in, and she had already packed her books and gone into her house, she
heard footsteps outside.
A woman stood at the doorway. She wasn’t young. Strands of silver shone through her braid. She was clutching the end of
her pallu nervously. Nandini recognized her. She had met the woman at the vegetable stall. Her husband worked as a
labourer in the city.
“I - ” she hesitated. “I want to learn.”
The words hung in the air between them. For a moment, Nandini only stared.
Then she smiled, and handed her a slate and chalk. She pulled out a chair and set up the board.
It was officially the first day of class.
***
"You’ve built one of Mumbai’s most impactful foundations for women and young girls. You’ve changed so many lives. Tell
us, where did it all begin?"
The woman sitting across from the young interviewer smiles, and adjusts her spectacles. Her hands are wrinkled, and her
hair grey from living life.
"It began with a six-year-old girl," she says. "She wanted to be a doctor.”
She looks out of the window at the skyline. She is so close to the sky that she can almost touch it.
“Then?”
“Dreams are fragile things when the world doesn’t want you to have them. Before she could hold on to hers, it slipped
away.”
“So, you established Sudha Foundation so that no one’s dream ever gets broken?”
She looks at the interviewer and nods.
“I did it, so no one would ever have to ration their dreams.”
There is a pause as the interviewer types away at her laptop.
“Tell me, who’s Sudha?”
“My mother. She told me to study well.”
Her eyes have started to lose colour. But the fire that was kindled so long ago, still thrives in them.
“And what made you believe you could do it?”
She fixes the pallu of her crisp cotton saree.
“I had to do it,” she says, and leans forward slightly and whispers, “for you, baccha.”
The interviewer smiles. She doesn’t write that part down.
“Do you have a message for the women who are reading this right now?”
Nandini exhales and looks at the young woman in front of her. The one who had held books freely, who never had to be
told to stop dreaming.
“If I’ve learnt anything, it’s this,” she says, her voice steady, “Sometimes, a woman is just enough to break the flow
of things."
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