‘Main kaam waali ki beti hoon’: Bharti Singh recalls father dying when she was 2, mother worked as a house help, family survived on leftovers

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Bharti said that her mother got married when she was 15, and by 20, she’d had three children. By 22, she was alone. “My mother was beautiful, she had long hair. She could’ve easily gotten married again. But she became a house help. Kaam waali ban gayi thi logon ke ghar. Main kaam waali ki beti hoon (She became a house help. I am the daughter of a house help). I remember, some days, I would go with her when she worked. And ladies would tell her to mop up properly. They’ve give her leftover food, and we’d be so happy that we’d get to eat kofta or daal makhani.”

Opening up about losing her father and how that made her feel as a child, Bharti said, “I was two when my father died. He had cholera, and he coughed up blood after drinking. I have no memory of him. Even today, there’s a picture of him at home, but I don’t recognise him. He’s a stranger. I tell them to pull the picture down. They wouldn’t make fun of me, but they would feel pity for me. The teacher would segregate us on the basis of who had a father and who didn’t, because the kids who didn’t have dads would be given schoolbooks. I didn’t know what a father was, I would hear my friends talk about their dads. I learned that fathers are strict and they bring gifts; I didn’t know. I would feel like I was different.”

Bharti is now one of the highest-paid individuals on Indian television. She has long been associated with Kapil Sharma, and now runs a massively popular YouTube channel with over 7 million subscribers.