Chitempally Parameshwari often feels like running away. “But, I can’t leave my children. They have only me,” the 30-year-old mother says.
Parameshwari’s husband, Chitempally Kamal Chandra was a farmer in his 20s when he ended his life in November 2010. “He didn’t leave a letter. That’s probably because he didn’t know how to write very well,” she says with a small smile.
And that’s how she became the sole parent to their two children, Sheshadri and Annapurna who now attend a government school and stay in a hostel 30 kilometres away. “I miss them a lot,” says the mother but then consoles herself saying, “I know they’re getting food on time.”
After her husband’s suicide, Parameshwari’s primary source of income has been the pension for widows under the Aasara Pension Scheme . “I used to get 1,000 [rupees] till 2019, but now I get 2,016 [rupees] every month.”
Apart from the pension, she earns Rs. 2,500 a month for working on the corn fields owned by her in-laws in the same village. Parameshwari also takes up daily wage work on other farms for which she is paid Rs. 150-200 a day, but she gets such work only occasionally.
It isn’t enough because 13 years after her husband passed away, she is struggling to repay the debts he left behind.
— source ruralindiaonline.org | Mar 17, 2023