‘My independence day has come to me over and over again’

Many people tell me why I didn’t make use of my school education to do better in life. But I schooled myself in the classrooms that life let me into and know that I have learnt many lessons that others have not. And I am good at arithmetic.

I grew up in Jadavpur, Kolkata, and had just about completed Class VIII in a government school when my parents got me married. I was 15. Given the sparse resources of families like ours, a good match for a daughter who had attained puberty was seen as the stepping stone to a better life instead of extended school fees and higher education.

My husband was a contractor at a unit that made ceiling fans in Delhi. Life was good for four years and we had a son. But union troubles meant that the unit shut down overnight. Somehow, my husband could not pick up any other job and we exhausted whatever savings we had in six months. We deferred fees and there came a point when we had to consider pulling our son out of Raisina School. That’s when I decided we couldn’t stop his education. We went to a mandi, bought vegetables with whatever money we had left and set up a stall next to Gate Number 3, ASN School, Mayur Vihar. I have been rooted to this spot like the peepul tree nearby since, but I have branched out too.

The first year was tough as there were many vegetable vendors in the vicinity. So I kept my prices affordable and slashed my profit margins. Then I reached out to Bengali professionals living in the adjoining apartment blocks like Samachar, most of whom missed the seasonal fruits and vegetables of Bengal and missed the flavours of home. I worked with my sourcing agent who helped me contact agents out of Kolkata for specific supplies. I went door-to-door to find out what people wanted and sourced them, my husband and me taking turns to babysit our child.

I began with sugar palm fruit, whose fritters are a signature Bengali seasonal delicacy, prepared during Janmashtami. Similarly, I started stocking fruits and vegetables favoured by the community and not easily available here — kasundi (mustard relish), posto baata (raw poppy seed paste), the patali gur (date palm jaggery) in winter and Gobindo Bhog (aromatic rice). I lined up a table and started cooking Bengali street food during festivals like Durga Puja. Now my sister-in-law runs this food counter alongside a neat food-catering business. Through all this, I made sure my son did his homework at our halogen-lit stall since business is good in the evening hours. He went to Zakir Husain College, then to NIIT and assisted me on weekends. I broke into an all-men vendors’ association because a woman’s voice deserves to be heard everywhere.

My independence day has come to me over and over again. There was the day my son became a software professional at PayTM, the day he married (my daughter-in-law is an MA in English and an accountant in Mother Mary School), the day I held my grandson, the day we travelled to Manali as a family (we are avid travellers now and have covered Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand), the day we dined at a restaurant and the day we took a flight. Now that I have got my passport made, I want to travel to Bangkok with my family.

As told to Rinku Ghosh