After a long search, Sri Narayanlal-ji found a job at 3 rupees a month with one Mister Attar. How was a family of four to sustain themselves in a famine with a measly sum of 3 rupees? My grandmother (Dadi-ji) tried to sustain the children by eating only half a meal, once a day, but even this was hardly enough. She tried to keep her family from going hungry by using grains like bajra, kukni, sanwa, jowar, and on worse days, half a portion of the cheapest grain mixed with half a portion of the cheapest saag available, with some salt, was the only meal for Dadi-ji and Dada-ji. The sons were given chana or jau rotis. Half-hungry always, they would somehow live through the day, but the nights were especially difficult on an empty stomach. It was impossible for the family to get basic minimum food. How were they to manage clothes and a place to live? Dadi-ji tried to get small, petty jobs at the families of respectable people in the neighbourhood. But who would be willing to put their trust in a woman whose antecedents were unknown and who didn’t speak like she was a local? No one would employ her or even give her grains to grind into flour, for they feared that she might eat the grains herself; those were the days of the famine, after all. It was only after many attempts of persuasion and requests for work that one or two women decided to give Dadi-ji some grains to make flour, but this upset the other women who had been previously hired for this work. There were many obstacles in finding work. If she found a job, it was barely to grind five–seven ser of grains and the wage was 1 paise per panseri (5 sers). It was three to four hours of hard labour to get 1 or 1.5 paise, and then she would return home to prepare food for the family. This was how two to three years were spent. Dada- ji would often wonder if they should return to their parental home, but Dadi-ji was firm that it was better to die here than return to a life of humiliation. She always felt that they had left their homeland, property, money, but it was impossible to bow in servitude to the people because of whom they were in this situation; they were witnessing bad days, but this too would pass. She faced terribly difficult times but did not once think of returning.
It was after about five or six years, when Dadi-ji became a familiar face, that the local women began to trust her and sympathize with her. They could see that she was from a good, decent family which had fallen on bad times. And the famine had ended.
She would now, once in a while, get some food in charity from the families living nearby, or a meal from a Brahmin home. Some days were spent thus. A few childless families approached and tried to cajole Dadi-ji into giving away one of her sons in exchange for money. But Dadi-ji was an ideal mother; she did not care for any riches and continued to raise her children as best she could in the circumstances.
The family managed some savings after years of labour and a little bit of work as purohits, and this money was used to send my father to school. Dada-ji also started earning a slightly better salary of 7 rupees a month. In some time, he left his job to work as a money-changer, dealing with duaani, chavvani, etc. Things got better and the family started seeing a daily income of 5–7 annas. Courage and hard work had borne the family out of hard times, and the credit for this goes to the revered Dadi-ji. Her patience and fortitude surely appeared to be divinely inspired, beyond human capacity. How else would an illiterate woman from a village work, earn a wage to feed and educate her children in extremely distressing circumstances—a woman who had never stepped out of her home, who had spent her life in a strict and orthodox Hindu environment where its followers were willing to die in defence of their traditions and customs; where a woman of a Brahmin, Kshatriya or Vaishya family would not dare to step out or visit another’s home without a ghunghat.
Even the Shudra women could not be out of their homes without veiling their faces. The clothes worn by the Shudras were anyway different from those worn by the other castes, so that they could be instantly recognized, even from a distance. And these customs have taken the form of oppression. There was this instance of a Chamar bride who had returned to the village upon her wedding in the British territory. As was the custom, she went to the zamindar’s house to pay her respects. Her attire was that of a Shudra woman but she wore bichhiya (toe ring) on her feet. The zamindar noticed her toe rings and asked of her caste. On being told that she was Chamar, he went inside his home and again came out wearing shoes. He came close to the Chamar woman, stepped on her toes, putting all his weight on her feet. Her toes were badly cut. He commented that if Chamar women now dared to wear toe rings, what would upper-caste women wear? The people here were uneducated and foolish, yet steeped in caste pride. No matter how educated or rich or elderly a Shudra might be, he would have to bow (pailaagan, juhar) before even the most uneducated or the poorest or even the young ones of the upper castes. If he failed to do so, he would be beaten with shoes, and it would be his own fault. If a daughter-in- law or daughter was suspected of adultery, she would, without a single thought, be killed and dumped in the Chambal. If a widow was found to be an adulteress or of ‘loose morals’, she too would be dismembered and thrown in the river, even if she was carrying a child. People would be none the wiser about the fate of the woman. These people were men of honour and values who would not hesitate to give up their lives to protect the honour of their women. It was Dadi-ji who alone could have the courage to do all that she did while being a married woman, maintaining all the customs of her land.
The difficult days finally came to an end, by God’s grace. Pita-ji managed to get some education and Dada-ji bought a house. The family which had once trudged from door to door had a place to settle down, and it was now time to think of my father’s marriage. Dadi-ji travelled to her maternal home with Dada-ji and Pita-ji, where my father was married off. They stayed there for a few months and then returned home with the bride.
Excerpted with permission from “A Glimpse of My Life” by Ram Prasad ‘Bismil’, translated by Awadhesh Tripathi, published by Penguin under the Chronicles Series, an initiative by The Ashoka Centre for Translation, and supported by the Majnu Deshbandhu Gupta Fellowship, 2025.
Ram Prasad ‘Bismil’ (1897-1927) was a Hindi writer, poet and revolutionary who committed his life to the freedom struggle. He participated in the Kakori train robbery, to amass funds for his revolutionary movement against the British, for which he was arrested and executed. His landmark autobiography was written during his time in jail, just before he was hanged, on 19 December 1927.
Translator
Awadhesh Tripathi is a translator and literary critic based in Bhopal. He has translated several books into Hindi, including Ganesh Devy’s After Amnesia, Gyanesh Kudasya’s India in the 1950s and Richard Eaton’s India in the Persianate Age. His monograph Kavita Ka Loktantra is a study of post-Independence Hindi poetry and its critique of the newly established Indian democracy. He teaches at Azim Premji University, Bhopal.
