Mothers sweet as honey, sons-in-law pungent as horse gram

In this edition of the Grindmill Songs Project: Lilabai Kamble of Kolavade village sings of irreplaceable mothers and the cruelty of in-laws while Tarabai Ubhe tells sons-in-law to limit their demands

“The powerful men and the thugs won’t support a sarpanch who has a mind and voice of his or her own. They will only support someone who will carry out their bidding,” says Lilabai Kamble, 58, a tenant farmer from Kolavade village in Pune district. “If the sarpanch is a woman, it is her husband or father-in-law who controls and she is completely dominated by them. If the woman dares to exercise an independent opinion, the men in her own family will make her life difficult.”

Lilabai has been an activist with the Garib Dongri Sanghatana (GDS), an organisaiton working with the rural poor in the hilly tracts of Pune district. She learned to read and write in adult literacy classes offered by GDS and, over time, developed strong views on village-level politics.

Lilabai lives with her husband Vitthal, their son Santosh, daughter-in-law Sheetal and their school-going grandchildren Yash and Soham. They are a family of tenant farmers, who work on tracts of land between 10 and 20 guntha, that is, between a quarter and a half acre. About 50 per cent of their harvest goes to the land owner and so it isn’t surprising that Lilabai’s other sons, Ashok and Nandkumar, work in Pune city as construction labourers.

On April 30, 2017, we made an impromptu trip to Kolavade to meet Lilabai and other women from the villages of Mulshi taluka, all of them singers for the Grindmill Songs Project (GSP). Liliabai’s home was our first stop.

Lilabai had contributed 176 ovi to the grindmill songs database. These couplets were written down over two decades ago and 18 of them were recorded on audiotapes by the original GSP team in the 1990s. We had come to photograph her and, with her as our guide, meet other singers here and from neighbouring Lawarde village. She also took us – Jitendra Maid (from the original GSP team), Samyukta Shastri and I – to Tarabai Ubhe’s residence in Kolavade, but the latter was not home that day.

So we returned to Lilabai’s home, one of the few that still uses the grindmill to crush rice and gram flour. It is a mud structure with a roof of tiles and tin sheets. It has a veranda with a metal-frame sofa and a living room with a small television set next to a single bed. The grindmill is in the kitchen which also has a sunken space for washing utensils.

Just calling someone a mother, doesn’t make her one
Even a woman’s neighbour cannot be compared to a mother

Mother, I say, is so sweet
She is like rock sugar with no bitterness at all

Mother is like honey from a honeycomb
I search within, but buttermilk cannot become milk

Father got his daughter married – he thinks he has done his duty
But he gifted his daughter into the hands of a butcher

Son-in-law, akin to my son, is like pungent horse gram
I gave him the daughter of my womb and yet he is so arrogant

Son-in-law, akin to my son, demands more and more
I have given you the daughter of my womb – what more can I give you?