Barapani Diary – We the women! (Part 6)
Barapani Diary
My job as an air traffic controller needs me to be posted at small and very small practically non-existent airports for a certain duration of time. In year 2011, one such posting led me to Barapani, an airport around forty kilometres away from Shillong. An entirely different world where from around thousand arrival departures at Delhi airport there was a lone flight to control, that too the flight played truant and missed our airport many days! In the place where my toddler grew up amidst nature, I read, wrote, introspected, reflected, and missed my husband at times!
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We the women!
Barapani had beckoned me time and again and I was drawn to the hills, the serene lake, the simple folk and the breath-taking beauty all around. At the beginning of my career, the pure beauty of the hills had taken me to the forsaken place where I worked as a temporary Physics teacher with a meagre amount. Sharing a flat with a pompous music teacher, living on my own and dreaming day and night in this heaven, what not it taught me…! And again this job as an air traffic controller brought me to this place for a year, a year with my toddler and a year without a spouse, a year of retrospection, a year of bliss, a year of solitude!
All said and done I know one thing I’d take with me from here is ( provided I leave at the right time) the memories of these girls here.. simple, smiling, hard-working.. running small shops on one hand and large families on the other. Independent, struggling, smiling and when required they can tackle their menfolk in an enviable manner, give them a taste of their own medicine..!
I have seen the domestic-helps from – Delhi, Guwahati, and Kolkata, one common thread binds them, one single story with one common character…a drunk violent jobless husband..! Here somehow the story has a twist. Braveheart, hardworking womenfolk, decision-makers and supporting men behind them. Well, things may not be as simple as they seem but for a change this is interesting, and I can’t help admiring these women…starting from their Jainsems wrapped neatly over their clothes, and when dressed for an occasion, their cardigans matching with the Jainsems and bellies following suit or the beautiful silk dharas adorning them…to their grit and tenacity…they are just enchanting!
Iva, the beautiful young girl with bright red lipstick on the days she is well and a nice flirty smile, works in the office from eight to five-thirty and has two sons at home. Most of the days as I return from an evening walk, I see her standing in queue to collect water from the roadside tap, sometimes beating up her son and sometimes her contagious sound of laughter catches my attention, as I turn to see her sipping tea in the small tea shop with other folks, waving at me, smiling with her Kowai stained lips.
There is Rani – pale timid, with three children at home, studying for her Class XII exams when she is not cleaning the office and making tea.
Meera is smiling and chatting, she lost her working husband to excessive drinking, left with five kids, and has no compensation from the office yet. Meera runs a tea shop the lifeline of the airport.. provides poori for breakfast, simple rice-sabji for lunch and roti for dinner. Sometimes I wonder without Meera’s shop all the airline’s staff, office staff, and workers would starve to death, even the passengers when a flight is delayed because nothing edible is found inside the airport.
Debo, Meera’s helping hand, overworked, stressed out often sick with stomach ache and fever, sits in the shop from morning to night. Without her Pooris aren’t fluffy enough. Lunch isn’t ready in time when she is taking a break. I have seen her carrying a pile of hay while returning from harvest. The pimpled and smiling girl. People say she won’t get married, some say failed love affair, who knows…!
Peaceful, the sweet fragile tiny office assistant whom everybody loves to tease, Theresa hardworking shy office attendant. She comes to the office leaving her infant at home.
And the numerous girls who run different shops, some sell Kowai the local betel nut, some pork and fish and on the local market day so many would flock around, some with a stoic expression, some using a smile to bypass the language barrier, oldies smiling and speaking in pure Khasi. I hardly get the language barring a few stray words I have picked up but the smile is infectious and the toil the hardship, my salutes to these women, hardworking, financially strong but empowered and independent… are they….? Naah! We have a long way to go…!
Soma Bhattacharjee