Rukhabai's wedding saree

Rukhabai Padavi can't resist running her fingers across the garment. Over the course of our conversation, I learn that doing so transports her to another time and life.

“Here is my wedding saree,” she says in Bhil, a tribal language spoken in the hilly and tribal region of Akrani taluk . Sitting on a charpai (cot), the 90-year-old gently feels a light pink and golden bordered cotton saree on her lap.

“My parents bought this with their hard-earned savings. This saree is my memory of them,” she says with a childlike smile.

Rukhabai was born in Mojara, a village in Akrani taluk of Maharashtra’s Nandurbar district; this region has always been her home.

"My parents spent 600 rupees on my wedding. It was a lot of money back then. They bought clothes worth five rupees, including this wedding saree, " she says. The jewellery, however, was made by her dear mother at home.

“There wasn't a goldsmith or craftsman. My mother made a necklace from silver coins. Real rupees. She pierced coins and sewed a thick thread of godhdi [handmade bedsheets] through the coins,” says Rukhabai, chuckling at the memory of the endeavour. Then she repeats, “silver coins ha . Not the paper money of today.”

She says her wedding was grand, and soon after, the young bride moved to her in-laws' village, Surwani, around four kilometres away from Mojara. This is when and where life started to take a turn. Her days were no longer simple or joyous.

"Even if it was an alien house for me, I convinced myself that I had to stay there now. For the rest of my life,” she says. “I was menstruating, so I was considered a grown up.” says the nonagenarian.

“But I had no clue what marriage was, what a husband is.”

She was still a child; young enough to play with friends the way children are supposed to. Her early marriage however, forced her to act and endure hardships beyond her years.

“I had to grind maize and millets all night. I had to do this for my in-laws, my sister-in-law, my husband and me –  five people.”

The work exhausted her, even giving her a constant backache. “Things have become so easy now with mixers and mills.”

In those days, it was hard for her to share the turmoil she felt inside with anybody. Nobody, she says, would lend her an ear. Despite the lack of willing and empathetic listeners, Rukhabai found an unlikely companion – an inanimate object. She takes out clay utensils kept in an old metal trunk. “I have spent so much of my time with them, over the chul , thinking about all the good and bad things. Utensils were my patient listeners.”

This isn’t uncommon. In many parts of rural Maharashtra, women found a confidant in another simple cooking tool: the grindmill. Everyday as they ground flour, women across ages sang songs of joy, sorrow and heartbreak to this kitchen tool, far away from the ears of their husbands, brothers and sons. You can read more here from the PARI series on the grindmill songs.

As Rukhabai rummages through the trunk, she can’t help her growing excitement. “This is dawi [a ladle carved from bottle gourd]. We used to drink water like this earlier," she says, demonstrating how. The simple act of showing me how is enough to get her laughing.

Within a year of her marriage, Rukhabai became a mother. By then she had just about figured out how to juggle house and farm work.

When the child arrived,  disappointment swept the home. “Everyone in the house wanted a boy, but a girl was born. It didn’t bother me, because only I had to take care of the baby,” she says.

After that Rukhabai had five daughters. “There was so much stubbornness for a boy. Eventually, I gave them two sons. Then I was free," she says, wiping her tears at the memory.

After giving birth to eight children, her body became very weak. “The family had grown but not the yield on our two gundha [roughly over 2,000 square feet] farm. There wasn’t enough to eat. And much less of the share was given to women and girls. It didn’t help that I had constant pain in my back."  Earning more was critical for survival. "Despite the pain, I used to go to build roads with my husband, Motya Padavi, for 50 paise a day."

Today, Rukhabai is able to watch the third generation of her family grow up in front of her. “It’s a new world,” she says, and acknowledges that change has brought some good.

As our conversation ends, she shares one of the present day’s oddities: “earlier during our periods, we used to go everywhere. Now women are not allowed inside the kitchen,” she says, visibly irritated. “Gods’ photos came inside the home, but women went out of it."