Still working after all these years

Danamati Majhi spends almost half her pension on a toothpaste which lists jaggery and tobacco among its ingredients.

“I receive 1,000 rupees as pension and give 500 rupees to my brother’s daughter-in-law who provides me with food,” she points out. “The rest I spend on buying salt, chilly, soap, oil for massage and gudakhu.”

When this reporter teased her that it’s a lot to spend on toothpaste when she has only a couple of teeth left, she gave a small smile and admitted, “without it I don’t feel good. It’s an addiction, like you all have – of gutka [chewing tobacco].”

Danamati lives in a mud house with mud tiles as a roof. One has to stoop to enter the sparsely furnished one-room abode. A stone crusher to crush the ragi, a torch, a mud chulha [stove] and a bamboo basket with clothes are the main items here. The elderly lady sleeps on the mud floor.

As we begin talking, she pulls out the stone crusher and starts grinding as she speaks about her childhood, growing up here in Kalahandi, Odisha, among the poorest parts of the country.

“It was a very difficult time. Our mothers would look for roots in the forest to feed us. We had one set of clothing which we wore all-round the year. When we would go to bathe in the stream, we had to wait till it dried to put it on again.

We first saw Danamati on the road, she was wearing a blue tee-shirt and was stepping down to the river. In one hand she had a lathi (stick) and in the other, a rope tied to a mother and her lamb walking alongside.

She is not quite sure of her age, but every single day Danamati is out and about, herding goats, working in the nearby mustard fields, managing her home, and leading a busy life. She says she occasionally consults a faith healer or jhola chaap doctor, and insists that she is perfectly fine.

A Kondh tribal, she lives in Tukuguda with her brother’s family in their ancestral home. This is a village of around 350 people (Census 2011), mainly of the Kondh Adivasi community.

Her children are in their late fifties and she has school-going great grandchildren, so she thinks she is nearly eighty. “I am staying with my brother's family in Tukuguda village,” she tells PARI.

“My daughter-in-law is a good soul, and my [two] grandsons have come to take me back home,” she says. But Danamati prefers to stay with her brother. Her home in Puiguda is just 10 kilometres away. Both villages lie in Thuamul-Rampur block – among the most backward, underdeveloped villages of Kalahandi district in Odisha.

Danamati used to live with her son and his family in her home in Puiguda village. Her husband died when the children were very young. “I have nurtured my children as a wage labourer. It was a very hard time. I have a son, and my daughter died very young,” she adds.

The family has about eight acres of land on which they grow millets and pulses like ragi, kosla, kangu, biri, kating, kandul and paddy. It is managed by her son Dumen Majhi and his wife, Sukhmati Majhi.

Dumen’s older son, Bir Singh Majhi, used to migrate for work. “I was working as a labourer in Alua in Thrissur district of Kerala, earning about 500 to 600 rupees a day. But I was missing my [11-month-old] daughter and wife [Jayanti], so I returned,” says the 24-year-old Bir who now works as a daily wage labourer in the village, but work is intermittent.

His younger brother Rup Singh Majhi, 21, has migrated to Hyderabad and works in a tent house. Thuamul Rampur block has a high incidence of poverty and high outmigration especially among youth, says a study by non-governmental organisation Gram Vikas. Kerala is a big attraction and they can earn an average Rs. 12,000-15,000 a month there.

Danamati says things are easier now, but she works as hard as ever. Her nephew Rajphul agrees, saying, “she is very active.”

Ledna Majhi is Danamati’s younger brother who brought her here to stay. “We told her not to work but she did not listen and does whatever she likes,” says 61-year-old Ledna Majhi.

“Please tell the government to provide a house [PMJAY] to me, so that I can stay there,” are Danamati’s parting words to me.