Nagpur: Amarjeet Singh Mehra and his wife Manjeet Kaur may be the perfect example of Leo Tolstoy’s lines — all happy families are alike and each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Evoking both sympathy and contempt from people around, the couple have their own story for being in a miserable condition today. Their story makes one feel that perhaps life has only brought downturns for them.
Locals quickly direct a visitor to their home, and are often sarcastic if one inquires more about them. Since the last six years, 78-year-old Amarjeet and his 67-year-old wife Manjeet have been living in the open at Mecosabagh. The flyover running above the road is the roof above their head. Their belongings — a couple of cots, two buckets and a LPG cylinder, lay arranged on the road where neighbourhood cars are parked.
Over the years, the childless couple has evoked sympathy of a number of passers-by, and also faced ridicule, anger and even hatred from others.
The couple came to Nagpur from Nainital in 2014. Since then they have been camping below the bridge, fighting a legal case to claim their share in Manjeet’s family property just across the road. Manjeet’s two brothers stay in a two-storey home barely 20 meters way from the spot.
Amarjeet relieves himself on the railway track nearby, while his wife is allowed to use the bathroom in one of her brother’s homes.
The locals, which includes their community members, say many attempts were made to rehabilitate them but they come back to the spot under the bridge after some days.
On Thursday, they were spotted by social worker Khushroo Poacha, who put their story on social media.
“We have spent five years here, and will remain till we win the case,” says Manjeet, adding that the hardships won’t deter her.
Amarjeet was 50 when he married Manjeet, who was 37. It was the first marriage for both, he says. Amarjeet was a truck driver in Nainital, when he met Manjeet’s father, who insisted that he marry his daughter.
“I grew up taking care of my sick mother. Two of my brothers died of illness in young age, and my days were spent in financial struggle. Marriage was out of the question. But somehow my father-in-law convinced me to marry his daughter,” he says.
Both husband and wife say they were initially reluctant to get married. However, Amarjeet’s father-in-law promised to support him, and they shifted to Nagpur, living in a rented home for three years before going back to Nainital, he says.
“I continued working as a driver in Nainital, but never earned enough to buy a house of my own,” he says.
In 2014, they came to Nagpur to meet Manjeet’s ailing mother, who died. Property dispute and the litigation followed soon after.
The other side of the story is more straight forward. Manjeet’s kin claim Amarjeet has been living on their money all his life, doing nothing, and now wants to take over the property too.