Unsung Heroes | Meet Jubedha who helped 1,000 Karnataka women become self-reliant

Jubedha was the eldest of five daughters. Her father was a driver, and money was always tight. The sisters often shared clothes and footwear, and even small celebrations were beyond the family’s means. Growing up, she learnt early what it meant to do without.

Her father, however, refused to let that limit his daughters. He taught Jubedha to ride a bicycle and encouraged her to learn skills the neighbourhood considered meant for boys. When neighbours asked why he was teaching a girl to cycle, he would simply ask what was wrong with it. “That spirit has stayed with me,” she says.

Her sense of community was also shaped early. As a girl in Class 6 or 7, she would wake before dawn to help neighbours observing Ayyappa rituals. While they did not cook at home during their observances, she went to their houses, prepared food, and helped with their prayers before returning to her own. “There was no distinction between people based on caste or religion. We all lived together and supported each other. That is how my parents brought us up,” she says. That belief would later become the foundation of her community work.

Jubedha giving free tailoring classes to women. (Express photo/Special Arrangement)

A marriage that left her alone

Life tested it soon enough. Jubedha married and had two daughters, but her husband left when the children were still young. She was suddenly responsible for raising them alone, carrying both the financial burden and the social judgement that so often follows a woman who is on her own.

She took up whatever work she could find. She worked during election campaigns and political programmes, accompanying women to events for modest payments. It was survival work, meant only to keep her household running. But it brought her into contact with more and more people, and slowly it led her towards social work.

“When a woman is alone, she has to hear a lot from society. I have gone through that. I know what hardship is and what it means to survive without depending on someone,” she says.

Teaching women to stand on their own feet

The experience made Jubedha acutely aware of how vulnerable a woman can be without an income of her own. In 2012, she became involved with the Mahila Samaj, helping women acquire skills that could earn them a living.

Over the years, women have received free training in tailoring, mehendi, beauty and grooming, and embroidery. Jubedha estimates that around 1,000 women have benefited from these programmes. For many, it has meant the difference between depending on others and being able to provide for their own families.

Her motivation comes straight from her own years of struggle. “I have struggled a lot to raise my children. I don’t want another woman to go through the same experience. A woman should be able to stand on her own feet and earn for herself,” she says.

For Jubedha, the purpose of social work is not only to offer immediate help but to leave people capable of supporting themselves. The livelihood she once had to scramble for has become something she now hands to others, free of charge.

Her work, however, reaches well beyond training classes. She continues to help people who are ill, elderly, abandoned or without family support. When she encounters someone who has been left without care, she tries to get them admitted to a hospital, locate their relatives and, where possible, reunite them with their families. If a family cannot be traced, she helps arrange shelter.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, when fear kept many people indoors, Jubedha got behind the wheel of an ambulance and drove people who needed medical care to the hospital.

She has also stood by those who died with no one to claim them. She has helped conduct around 106 funerals for people without relatives, taking care that the last rites follow each person’s own religious customs. She has donated blood 56 times. For nearly two decades, she has also been associated with a shelter for people living with mental health conditions, helping residents with hospital visits and other needs. When a resident dies, she helps with the funeral arrangements.

Much of this happens without public attention. For Jubedha, it is an extension of the principle she learnt at home: people should not be left alone when they need help.

That principle is perhaps most visible every year, when the neighbourhood comes together for Ganeshotsava.

Bhavaikya Ganapathi and honours that followed

Jubedha has helped organise the festival for the past 18 years and has been unanimously elected president of the committee that runs it. The committee oversees the installation of the idol, the rituals and other programmes.

The festival is known as ‘Bhavaikya Ganapathi’ and its draw is not only devotion but who turns up. “Everyone comes. Muslims, Christians and Hindus all participate. Nobody asks why I am organising Ganapati because they know that I intend to bring people together,” she says.

She is also involved in programmes around Holi, Deepavali and Karthik Deepotsava. She believes the effect goes beyond the celebrations themselves. When children grow up watching neighbours take part in one another’s festivals, she says, they learn that differences in religion need not mean separation. It is the same lesson she absorbed as a schoolgirl cooking for neighbours at dawn, now passed to the next generation.

Her work has since grown into a public role. Jubedha is currently the president of the Narasimharajapura Municipality. Since 2024, she has also served as secretary of the Kannada Sahitya Parishat. Her engagement with literature runs alongside her social work, and she has two poetry collections (*Kavana Sankalana*) written in 2001 and 2013.

Her service has brought several honours, including the Corona Warrior award, Nagarika Seva Prashasti, Udaya Kannadiga Prashasti, Kannada Rajyotsava Prashasti and the Junior Mother Teresa award. These recognise her social service, civic contribution and work in Kannada.

But recognition is not what drives her. “I have seen a lot of pain in my life. But I have chosen to find my happiness in making other people happy,” she says.

A childhood of scarcity, followed by raising two daughters alone, did not end with survival for Jubedha. It became the foundation for a life spent making sure others have someone to turn to, whether they are women looking for a livelihood, patients without support, people abandoned by their families, or neighbours simply looking for a community that will stand by them.