‘My family has lived in India for 60 years’

My father was a truck driver.

My mother was a seamstress.

They lived in a small bungalow at the foot of a hill.

My father worked on the road as a driver and my mother as a seamstress.

They had a house and a daughter who was born two months before my birth.

A few months before she was born, my father died of a heart attack.

I had a small house with a garden, a few cows, a vegetable garden, and some rice in it.

My brother had a job as a clerk.

My sister was studying and working at a shop in the village.

We used to cook and clean for them.

The next day, my mother died.

My grandmother had a stroke.

I was born a month before her.

My parents had no money.

My family lived in one-room bungalows at the edge of a forest.

They used to eat meat and rice.

When I was two, my grandmother died.

Then my mother got an accident.

My uncle took her to a hospital.

The doctor put her in a wheelchair.

She died.

I remember sitting on my uncle’s lap when he died.

She had been in the hospital a long time.

I grew up with a grandmother who was my mother’s great-grandmother.

The doctors who did the autopsy said my grandfather was the cause of death.

The family moved around a lot.

My grandfather used to work in a truck factory.

He had three children, three sisters, and one brother.

They were all working and earning money.

After my grandmother’s death, my grandfather’s son became a truck operator.

They sold us cars.

We were lucky.

My aunt’s father had a very good job.

He would take me to the market, and he would pay me Rs 50 for an empty car.

But when he had money, he would buy an old car.

My nephew’s father worked as a trucker.

He took me to a market and paid me Rs 30.

He also bought me a car.

He gave me Rs 15.

I never worked as an adult.

I stayed in the family home till I was 21.

When my father passed away, I went to live with my uncle.

I used to help my uncle in the fields.

My mom, aunt, uncle, and sister worked in the local market.

My older sister went to school and got a degree.

My cousins used to go to the fields to get cotton.

My younger brother was also an auto mechanic.

We lived in the same house.

My cousin, my brother’s brother, and my sister’s brother were all students.

I also took a degree in computer science from a university.

I am from a small village.

I studied at the University of Jharkhand.

My wife and I lived with my parents in a house in the hills of Srinagar.

When the rains came, we had to move to a nearby village.

My relatives worked in a factory.

My husband was an auto driver.

He did maintenance work.

When he went to the factory, he used to give a lot of money to the workers.

He used to make a lot and pay the workers a good salary.

I worked as he did.

My youngest brother, who was studying in engineering, took me in as his son-in-law.

My elder brother, my sister, my cousins, and I all went to a private school.

I took a postgraduate course from a private college.

I got a PhD in economics from a college in Kolkata.

My sons, my brothers, and even my grandmother, who worked in agriculture, went to different colleges.

I did not want to work.

I wanted to be a doctor.

I went into private practice.

I taught a few classes.

Then I started working as a teacher.

I started teaching at a university in Delhi.

I stopped teaching when I retired.

My first child was born in 1977.

He was born with a disability.

My second child was in a car accident.

He died soon after he was born.

My son was a doctor, and later I started a private practice, and started taking the law degree.

I applied to all the law colleges in India, but I was rejected.

I kept thinking, “If I go to law school, I will be able to get a job.

I will get a lot more money and I will not be able, if I go for a job, to be discriminated against.”

When my third child was eight years old, I was married to my wife.

My fourth child was a daughter, and then my husband died.

The last child was three years old when I died.

At the time of my death, I had eight grandchildren.

I married a farmer, and when I had my second child, I moved into a village and started a house.

I began to teach children and work with them.

When they were five years old and six years old.

I became a teacher myself.

My daughter