SEWA Women's Co-operative Federation

Meet the cheerful Kokilaben, who has been associated with SEWA's Home Care Co-operative since the last nine years.

(Happy Fact 101: Kokila means 'nightingale', quite appropriate, because I can vouch for the lovely lilt in her voice)

Here is an excerpt from her story :)

"She also opened an account with the SEWA bank, which she is thrilled about. She is no longer the kaam waali that could be whimsically abused; she is a woman of her own right working to earn a living in the company of people who are respectful and extremely considerate. The financial stability that comes with SEWA Home Care has altered her. Another major benefit that comes from being part of the co-operation, though, is increased capacity building. She has become a woman of courage"

Story of Rehat Ansari: Stitching doll’s clothes to becoming a designer
“I am working with Design Sewa since last 14 years. At the age of 14 I joined SEWA. In our Muslim community, women are not allowed to step out of the house or show their face to other men.
We are five siblings. In 2002, Gomtipur- the place where I used to stay was severely affected by riots. All the houses in our locality were burnt and we went to the riot relief camps. Sairaben, a member of the Artisan co-operative, started bringing stitching work for us. Gradually as situation improved, we brought our stitching kits from the camp and started working from home. I learnt stitching in the camps and started to make bags and quilt covers. After lots of pursuation by Sairaben, with my brothers and mother, they allowed me to work Design Sewa in Dhal Ni Pol.
After I started moving out of my house to work, there came a sea change in my outlook towards life and girls in particular. I now say that girls should be educated and allowed to work. I have changed my mother’s mindset also. Now she appreciates my achievements and development. She says she will allow her granddaughters to study.
Dislike other girls in my community, I married at the age of 22. I participated in different exhibitions and study visits to Mumbai, Jaipur and Kutch. I felt very happy when my photograph was printed in Indian Express. Link: http://www.newindianexpress.com/…/…/01/09/article3216600.ece
When I was young, I used to stitch my doll’s clothes. Since then I had a desire to become a designer. I now see it happening. With the help of Sewa Co-operative Federation, we artisans have undergone numerous trainings in different crafts and skills. I feel that I just do not have a formal degree, other than that I am perfectly equipped to be a designer”, she asserted confidently

Jashodaben Makwana, Earning dignity and respect through Homecare Cooperative
“I was working as a head loader at the Kalupur Sabji Mandli. Since I was a woman and could not move as fast as the men, I was often subjected to abuses by the employer. Many times I thought of simply leaving the work and going away but I had children to feed. Moreover my husband had fallen ill and his medicines were an added expense. My day started at 5:30 a.m. My work was to carry 50-60 kg of vegetables on my back and take it to the wholesale shop. I was paid Rs. 5 for a round trip.
One day, my neighbor informed me about Sewa Homecare Cooperative, where women get employment by providing home-care services. I became a member of the cooperative when I visited it for the first time. I attended trainings in co-operative and management education. Thereafter I also got skill training in housekeeping, patient care and senior citizen care. You know, since then I have been earning a regular income and my work is not even tiresome. Today I earn Rs. 8500 a month. It has enabled me to get my elder daughter married and I have also been able to renovate my house. But my biggest achievement was that I could educate both my daughters from the money that I saved in the bank after working here. Earlier I was the only person running the house but now even my younger daughter contributes in the family’s income. She is a graduate as has a job now. My dream has come true.
Today, I am a member of the Executive Committee of the Cooperative. Apart from all this, I must mention that I have become very confident as an individual today. First no one respected me in my community but now they treat me with great respect. I also take decisions on my own.”

Sushilaben, a member of our Home Care Co-operative, in conversation with Sw****ka Jajoo

(An excerpt from the original story)

That night, her husband tied her hands behind her back and force-fed her kerosene. She was still alive the next morning, and knew that she had to find a way to escape. Her husband had instructed all truck drivers and other people in the vicinity to not talk to her, no matter what. So, she tried approaching a woman who lived a few blocks away. She agreed to help her and sent her to the station in a car, but also immediately informed her husband, who happened to be near the station at that time. He intercepted her but she threatened to create a scene in the public and managed to leave. “I told him that he and his family are dead for me. I had no skills whatsoever, but I told him I will take responsibility for my son and bring him up”, she recounted.

She spent a year at home, recovering from the all wounds inflicted upon her. After a year, she procured a job that involved caring for an old lady with paralysis. It was quite a nauseating job, and she couldn’t do it for more than six months because she was already weak. She earned Rs. 3,500 for these six months, but fell terribly sick afterwards. She was hospitalized. However, she had collected enough money to send her son to an English-medium school.

It was through her uncle that she was introduced to SEWA Home Care. She came to the organization’s office, got herself registered, and took on whatever work was available. She has done about 20 jobs with SEWA Home Care for different clients. In 2014, she got a child-care assignment, and has been there since. She lauds SEWA for being a very professional organization. “The training taught me to build a home wherever I go” she said” she said.

Sushilaben Chogaji Solanki: A Story of Fortitude and Resilience

"They say life is a cycle of sorrow and joy. My life has been a journey of so much hardship and pain. I would like to believe that these chapters of sorrow have now come to a close and with SEWA Home Care Co-operative, I will write my story afresh. This is a new beginning for me. I want to forget everything that has happened with me in the past” said Sushilaben, her eyes moist and her words quivering with the inescapable ache of her lived past.

The forty minutes I spent interviewing Sushilaben were an exercise in holding my breath to the point I felt my lungs would collapse. Her story is a canvas of excruciating details that forced me to reassess how I look at the world. For an urban consumer of news, her story seems like it is drawn straight out of a newspaper report that makes you cringe inwardly but you forget it as you turn the page: these things happen every day, after all. It is no news. It pricks you but not enough for you to actually be bothered by it. When I found myself face-to-face with an actual survivor of domestic abuse, a woman who has actually been made to swallow poison by her in-laws, a woman who was actually married at sixteen to a man who was already married, a man who actually is a ra**st and brought several women home in her presence, the reality of such stories began to sink, slowly, one word at a time – and then, all together, leaving me, like I have already said, breathless.

Sushilaben has been associated with SEWA since the last eight years; she joined the Home Care Co-operative in 2008. She was born and brought up in Ahmedabad, comes from a low-income family, and has studied only till the seventh grade. She started working at a very young age and her first job involved making and packaging saline bottles for a local hospital. She did this for nearly half a decade, after which her parents decided to get her married. She was only sixteen. Since it was a court marriage, the judge refused initially because he thought her too young but he gave in after accepting a bribe.

Sushilaben’s husband was a tyrant in the true sense of the term. A part-time jeep driver who sometimes assisted his father’s farming activities, he earned very little money. He was morally unsound, had several affairs and r***d many women repeatedly. He was jailed several times. When he married Sushilaben, he already had a wife. Sushilaben’s in-laws also constantly badgered her for dowry and demanded a car.

Within a year of marriage, Sushilaben was pregnant. “I had no idea about what was happening to me and what they were doing with me. I was still a child. I didn’t know what love is. I still don’t”, she said. They tried to burn her, gave her an overdose of medicines, attempted poisoning her, put itching powder on her clothes when she was taking a bath and smeared her face with cow-dung. “It was all too much”, she told me, “But like any other woman, I wanted to build my home, my sansar, so I put up silently”. Three months into pregnancy, she was asked to take up labour in the field. Her in-laws told her that if she wanted to stay there, she will have to work in the fields, earn enough money and pay them the rent. On festivals or any other celebratory occasions, they left her out in the fields and denied her food. There was a time when she went without food for a week.

One day, while she was working in the fields, she felt an unbearable ache in her stomach and called out to her in-laws and husband. They ignored her, and she swallowed a bottle of pills she found in distress. She got very sick. She recouped despite no hospitalization, and their treatment of her did not differ. Her husband came home drunk one day and beat her up. He told her that he was in love with a girl who lived behind their house. She asked him why he married her in the first place, and that attracted a fresh series of blows. Hurt and distraught, she begged him to become a better man for their child. But he said that he will never change.

For her delivery, she was sent to her mother’s house and continued to stay there for half a year. She had a healthy baby boy and they named him Shubham. When he finally visited her with his parents, they told her mother to bury her in case she dies because they did not care for her anyway. Her mother pleaded with them to treat her better, but it didn’t make a difference. They used to come, forcefully take her and send her back. This happened at least four times. Then, they placed her in house arrest and forbade her from talking to or meeting any people. She was treated like livestock and given stale rotis for meals. They made her construct an entire house from scratch which involved bringing heavy bags of cement and layering bricks among other things. They also demanded her to cook for everybody and make tiffins. All of this excessive labour led to a terrible infection in her stomach and when she begged to be taken to the hospital, they simply refused.

That night, her husband tied her hands behind her back and force-fed her kerosene. She was still alive the next morning, and knew that she had to find a way to escape. Her husband had instructed all truck drivers and other people in the vicinity to not talk to her, no matter what. So, she tried approaching a woman who lived a few blocks away. She agreed to help her and sent her to the station in a car, but also immediately informed her husband, who happened to be near the station at that time. He intercepted her but she threatened to create a scene in the public and managed to leave. “I told him that he and his family are dead for me. I had no skills whatsoever, but I told him I will take responsibility for my son and bring him up”, she recounted.

She spent a year at home, recovering from the all wounds inflicted upon her. After a year, she procured a job that involved caring for an old lady with paralysis. It was quite a nauseating job, and she couldn’t do it for more than six months because she was already weak. She earned Rs. 3,500 for these six months, but fell terribly sick afterwards. She was hospitalized. However, she had collected enough money to send her son to an English-medium school.

It was through her uncle that she was introduced to SEWA Home Care. She came to the organization’s office, got herself registered, and took on whatever work was available. She has done about 20 jobs with SEWA Home Care for different clients. In 2014, she got a child-care assignment, and has been there since. She lauds SEWA for being a very professional organization. “The training taught me to build a home wherever I go” she said” she said.

Her current assignment involves taking care of two adorable twins, Arnav and Angel. She has been staying with them since she was two. They turn five next month, July 2016. They love her immensely and it was very evident that she loves them back. Their mother stays in Dubai and visits only once in three months of so. The children are entirely Sushilaben’s responsibility. She wakes them up, dresses them for school, cooks for them, sends them to their tuition classes and plays with them. She earns Rs. 12,000 a month, which she uses for her son Shubham’s education.

Shubham is now thirteen years old and is a very talented child. He is not only academically ahead of his class, but is adept at art. He designs and makes beautiful tattoos, and has filled more than five artbooks with his conceptualizations. He studies in an English-medium school and gives several international exams, in which he has ranked very well. He is a very loving son. He stays with Sushilaben’s mother, but whenever Sushilaben does to visit, he makes her a cup of tea or coffee. He is very possessive of her. He knows that everything Sushilaben is doing is for him, and he lives up to it.

Sushilaben got a divorce from her husband in March 2016 after a long, long struggle. Although he refused to give any money towards his son upbringing, the judge directed him to pay Rs. 2, 00,000 and accordingly, he has paid the sum.

Sushilaben reads the Bhagavad Gita every day. It says that it gives her peace. SEWA has enabled her to become a happier, more wholesome person and she says that she will stay associated with the organization for as long as she is alive. More power to Sushilaben!