Living a Dignified Life

It is an another version of http://bornagainamina.blogspot.in/2013/02/atma-gives-increased-income.html. This article is written to show the story from his daughter's side.

Hemalatha, aged 31 lives with her only daughter and Father in the back yard of her Brother’s home in Surakudy Village of Karaikal District of Union Territory of Puducherry (earlier it was called as Pondicherry). She is too brilliant to read from the facial expressions and body language. She can neither hear nor speak, but that is not her only trouble, a widow from her early 20’s, Hemalatha is also a single mother at the prime of her youth. To overcome all these challenges Hemalatha decided to invest most of her time with her Father’s cattle. He is also a dependant on his only son. Hemalatha, her daughter and her father live in a hut behind his son’s house. In the backyard, daughter and father grow vegetables and fodder to live a dignified life. 

Hemalatha is very much restricted to her house as she is involved in the household chores only and not exposed to the open world. Fodder in her life is also an interesting story as it created an opportunity. Sinnappa Pillai is an agricultural worker who is also having few cattle in his home with which he is earning his living. Hemalatha’s father is a member of Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA) group. As a part of a training program 100 fodder slips were provided to all the fifteen member participants of the group. Hemalatha’s family grew the fodder slip according to the instructions provided and it multiplied into thousands providing fodder slips to many without any cost as they got the initial slips free from a Government scheme.

Fodder is a grass variety whose leaves are fed to cattle which are more advantages than other forms of feed as it is natural and rich in moisture, nutrition and fiber content. It is reproduced through rooted slips (actually the bottom portion of the stem). Once the grass matures, the grass gives a lot of tillers that is becomes very bushy - even if it was planted as a single slip, it would become a bush of around 25 tillers. Fodder multiplied from one hundred to thousands because of the hard work of the daughter and father. She toiled with her father not wasting time and space in the backyard. Each additional tiller from the fodder found a place in some space in the backyard in an aesthetic way. A tiller is a stem produced by the grass plants, and refers to all shoots that grow after the initial parent shoot grows from a seed. Tillers emerge from each node at the base of the fodder. Tillers are usually segmented in the internodes area with one or two buds emerging from it. Such pieces of the fodder slips are used for vegetative propagation.

The parental care to the cattle and stall feeding the fodder helped her cattle to yield more milk than ever before. The quality of their milk was improved and made the neighbors to demand Hemalatha’s milk more than others! Often she sells the excess milk to the milk vendor, helping her family to live a dignified life. A hard worker runs in toes from early morning to late night. She gets up before sunrise, completes the household chores, prepares her daughter to school, takes care of the cattle, milks the cows and delivers to neighboring households to earn a Dignified Life. Though she lives behind her brother’s house she is economically independent and manages all the expenses of her life with meager income. An example of self-confidence and self respect, Hemalatha is an inspiration!