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Trafficked into Haryana in their teens, they were sexually exploited and physically abused all through their youth before being abandoned by their ‘husbands’ in their middle age. Ashok Kumar reports on the plight of the hundreds of survivors of trafficking, some elderly, who, in the absence of any support from the local administration or civil society, have been left to fend for themselves A one-room school building has been Balqis’s home for the past 15 years. The ramshackle structure, which stands amid a grove of Kikar trees, has neither doors nor window frames. Located on the outskirts of Madhi village in Haryana’s Nuh district 60 km from the national capital, it is all that Balqis has by way of shelter. A monthly old-age pension of Rs. 1,800 and the occasional wages she gets for washing dishes at weddings are her only sources of income. Balqis, now in her late 50s, sits outside the building, thread basting a lap quilt. She takes a deep breath before she begins her story. Three decades ago, she, along with her then five-year-old son, was tricked by their family’s domestic help into travelling to a village in Nuh on the pretext attending a family function. Once they reached Nuh, she was sold to a man, a Nat by caste (traditionally a community of jugglers and entertainers), for Rs. 2,500. Salim Khan, a Nuh-based social activist, says that Balqis Tai (Tai is ‘aunt’ in Haryanvi) was from a well-settled Pathan family in Bidar, Karnataka, and was married to a bus driver at the time she was trafficked. Left stranded in Nuh with neither money nor the means to return to her parents in Bidar, she resigned herself to her fate. “Those were simple times. The women were too naive and innocent,” sighs Balqis, who was surrounded by some of her grandchildren. Four of them are in school, while the eldest, a girl of around 18, got married three years ago. Balqis’s only son, Karim, is illiterate and works as a daily-wager. Her daughter-in-law is expecting her 14th child in a few months. Jaleva, the man who ‘purchased’ Balqis, was already married but childless. “He frequently beat me up and made me do all the household chores. He also maltreated and abused my son,” she recalls in a matter-of-fact manner. She and her son were thrown out of the house after 15 years of marriage when it became clear that she could not bear a child. She had to fend for herself without any source of income. Jaleva has since bought and married two more women. Led by Khan’s father, affectionately known as Deena sarpanch, villagers then helped arrange the abandoned school building as a makeshift shelter for the distraught woman and her son. But the room has now been partially encroached by local ‘dabangs’, or musclemen, who have begun using it to store cattle fodder, leaving little space for the family. Karim recently erected a ‘kachcha’ room adjoining the building to accommodate his growing family.
Source : https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/the-outsiders-of-haryana/article25522312.ece
