Date:08/03/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/03/08/stories/2007030803540500.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

A proud people have been reduced to nobodys

Swathi Shivanand

`I WANT TO GO HOME': A girl from Rajasthan selling ear buds on Mahatma Gandhi Road in Bangalore on Wednesday. — Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

BANGALORE: A group of four young women sit on the median on M.G. Road, talking nineteen to the dozen, unmindful of the traffic that flows by. But as we try to photograph them, they flee, suspicious of our motives.

Their red-and-yellow odhnis and flowing skirts are enough, however, to tell the story of their long journey from Rajasthan to Bangalore.

Away from their putative rich past, these fine-featured women present a contrast on the busy Mahatma Gandhi Road and Cubbon Road, selling cheap items to people in swanky cars.

About 40 people, including women, from that land of the desert, a proud people, great forts and melodies, migrated to the city in hope of a less cruel life. On the median on Cubbon Road, we come across beautiful Sunita, carrying a baby in her arms and flanked by two men she calls "my brothers".

Claming to be 17 years old, she says she came with her family to escape poverty. "We feel ashamed to beg at our home. Everyone knows us there," she said.

"So we bought tickets and came in a train to the city. We do not have roads such as this in our place in Kotla village," she comments on the difference.

On Kamaraj Road, two women sell car screens. They are ready to speak about their lives. "We did not have water to drink there and the little farming we did finally had to be stopped," says a young girl not more than 14 years old. When we ask her name, she calls herself Rajabehen and laughs gruffly. There is no way to crosscheck.

"I have never studied before. And I do not want to. I want to earn," she says. But do they earn enough to live well in the city?

"I want to go back to Rajasthan. Our lives were better," she says. At the end of a hot day, they earn only about Rs. 20 each. They live in a tin-sheeted hovel, for which they have to pay a rent of Rs. 200.

As we talk to these women, a young boy comes up and asks accusingly, "Why do you hide and take our photos? Why do you want to trouble us?" Then as we explain to him that this is a feature for International Women's Day, he asks: "What is a woman?"