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Profiles of Single Women and their Struggles |
| SUTRA has collated svereal case studies on the struggles single women face in pursuit of security and sustenance in Himachal Pradesh |
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Chameli Devi
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 Hemlata Devi
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Jai Devi |
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Lata Devi
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Radha Devi
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Savitri Devi
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Vidya Devi
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Vinay Mittal
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 Jai Devi
Jai Devi Rawat is 53 years old and hails from Shalaghat, in Kunihar block, which is in Solan district.
She has been living alone since her husband died one year ago. He was an alcoholic and also suffered from chest cancer.
She owns a two-storey house and some 22 acres of land, which she gives on rent to other people who mostly grow vegetables on that soil.
When her husband was still alive three years ago, they had taken a loan to open a shop. But now this shop is run by others who rent it and sell liquors.
She has got two daughters. The elder one, who is 35 years old, is married and has one child. The younger one, 21 years old, got married seven months ago.
Jai Devi's husband got mentally sick around the time the younger daughter got married. She tried to take him to the hospital, but he refused and when she finally managed to get him there, the cancer had already spread inside his body and he eventually died. When he was still alive, he tried to sell the land little by little to pay back the people who had given them loans.
Besides being a heavy drinker, he often got angry at his wife and used to fight with her. When he was drunk, he would even slap her.
In one of their fights, she frightened him by saying she would go to a lawyer and ask for a divorce. He replied that only he could give her a divorce and not vice versa, but after that he treated her sweetly for a while.
Once he cooked a meal that she could not eat because she was fasting and she told him she would like to eat something else, so he got angry again. Then, he tried to hit her and she ran out of the house and stayed outside in the cold all night. When she came back, they got into a quarrel again and that made her so upset that she decided to kill herself.
So she asked God for a way to help her and then she realised that there was some poison to kill rats in the house. She took the poison and tried to kill herself, but her husband came and asked her what she wanted to eat and realised that something was wrong with her. Since he didn't know what, he called an old woman who figured out that Jai Devi had tried to poison herself.
The woman started accusing Jai Devi's husband that she had tried to kill herself because he had harassed her. The next thing she remembers is that she was in a hospital and the police were standing next to her bed. When they asked her whether she had been harassed she said no and instead told them that she wanted to take some medicine and took the wrong one, but that there had been no quarrel between them.
Besides the fights, he also constantly took money from her so that he could drink. She tried to make him understand that they should rather use the money to build a proper house and she put most of the money into her property. Finally after her husband's death, she built the two-storey house mentioned above and says that people tell her that she did a good job.
She had joined a women's association in her village before her husband's death and in that Mahila Mandal, she also met people from SUTRA. This is how she came to know about the ENSS and two years ago she joined it. Since then, she got a lot of information from the organisation and she appreciates that SUTRA told her how to present herself in front of officers and informed her about the laws and regulations for single women. Basically, what she gained from SUTRA is knowledge and information about the benefits that are available for single women.
Her major struggle now is land issues, because her brothers-in-law claim that land as common property. By the time her husband had bought the land on loan, it was also attached to the other family members and now they are trying to take advantage of her situation and take over the property, which actually belongs to her. She decided to fight and not let go of the property to make sure that she gets her rightful share.
Presumably, the property, which belongs to the whole family, was given to her brother-in-law since he has sons and she only has daughters. So she is still fighting for that share, but the property she and her husband got when he was alive is finally in her custody.
In general she thinks that she is a little better off now than when her husband was still alive, because now she can do more for herself and for others without constantly fighting. One thing she is hoping for is when children get married and leave the house, their parents will get support from SUTRA or some other organisation. If she could change something, she would like to see old family members to be taken care of. Moreover, she would like to build up an association which especially gives respect and love to women who are left by their husbands, and lastly, people should do good to themselves and to others.
When asked about the biggest change for widows between the older days and now, she says that then, women were supposed to cover their heads and could not wear bangles once they became widows and would not be allowed to be too open in the society. If they went out of the house and spoke with people, the community would consider this bad behaviour and that certainly is a lot better today.
On SUTRA's role ten years from now she thinks that because children will be more educated, organisations like SUTRA will be less needed than today.
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