Imagine! Being a young girl, not yet in your teens. Your only experience of life is your tiny family, living in a shabby, one-roomed flat in the bustling metropolis of Chennai, South India. Your school, and the dusty, ramshackle building you live in, is your entire experience of the world. Your father, mother, brothers, and baby sister make up the total of your human engagement. And then one day your father dies. And your world changes overnight.
Madhuri lost her father when she was very young and was sent away by her mother to live in a charitable establishment that was meant to educate and prepare her to be independent. But instead, between haphazard classes and gruelling physical labour, she became an unpaid servant looking after many young children, most of whom were afflicted with severe cerebral palsy. She never saw the outside world, watched television, or experienced the warmth of a gentle maternal hand.
At sixteen, her mother put her into service with an affluent family where she worked 365 days a year, twelve hours a day, sweeping, swabbing, cleaning and running around until she was ready to drop. She never received any payment for this back-breaking labour and her only clue that life could be different came from watching the daughter of that wealthy home sail through life, petted and spoilt and pampered. Despite this, she managed to carve out friendships with the other help in the house and began to make peace with her lot in life, until the master of the house turned his unwelcome attention on her. In a panic, she managed to get word back to her mother, who arrived one morning soon after and unceremoniously took her away.
As there was no money for a dowry, Madhuri's mother married her to a man whose sister was barren, and no money was asked provided Madhuri produced offspring for her sister-in-law as well. Her first child was a boy and therefore she and her husband were allowed to keep him. But her second child, a girl, was taken away and handed to her sister-in-law shortly after the birth. After a third child, another girl, the pressure to produce a son and heir for this sister-in-law became severe and abusive. Her husband, an alcoholic, had no problem beating her at the slightest provocation and offered little support. Her brothers deserted her, and her little sister became one of India's many 'lost' girls. Finally, in desperation, and in an effort to take control of her own life she, quietly, without telling a soul, went to the local Government Hospital and had a hysterectomy.
Madhuri's story is not uncommon to her layer of society in India. Her home is a tiny house in a slum in Chennai, eight feet by ten, with an asbestos roof. She walks miles to get to a bathroom or to fetch water, and luxury for her is second-hand clothes and shoes. You probably know a Madhuri if you know India in any small way. She is one of those indistinct creatures that has been forgotten by society, by her family and by the powers that be. But her story is the story of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. For the Madhuris of this world there is no possibility of refugee status, no Nobel prize for her suffering, no glamour in being a slum dog, or the chance of being a millionaire. And yet on her labours, and those of others like her, the world continues to turn, truly making her the poster child for all of life's most awe-inspiring and unsung heroes.
This is her story...
