If there’s something M Kalaiyarasi knows about her sour lemon ice cream, it is that it has a tang that hits you where you can’t miss it. Much like her own tasteful riposte to 13 years of injury and isolation from those she held dear. Because as of this day, the tables have turned. Her husband — whose unending infidelity incited her to set herself on fire and end up with a disfigured face as a girl of 17 — has been striving to get back into her life, “with no luck, of course”. And the mother who refused to take her in as she fled her abusive home, is now a rock solid support system and loving grandparent who gets her three hearty meals a day from the money this 29-year-old dessert chef brings home.
Then there is Nandini, a postwoman spurring others to take up work in a male-dominated space. Kalaiyarasi, Nandini and six other women from the slums of Teynampet will be felicitated by city NGO Sethu Foundation on International Women’s Day on March 8 for transforming their lives. A free counselling service and a drop-in centre to help women cope with family disharmony, child-related issues, alcoholic spouses and domestic violence, will also be unveiled as part of the event. “I had been declined work at least 20 times, at shops, homes and factories, because they didn’t like my face. I felt like I was going to be paying a lifelong price for something I did out of hurt and impulse as a teenager,” says Kalai. “In all those places, I was trying to get a job as a housekeeper or cheap labourer, but then, I connected with the International Foundation for Crime Prevention and Victim Care (PCVC), who put me at work at a café where I learned how to make desserts. Today, I’ve moved to a restobar and train a young team on everything I learnt on that job.”
Another woman the neighbourhood gleams for Malathi. Until Covid struck, the 45-year-old was working at a leather factory making shoes, when they shut down abruptly, leaving numerous women jobless. But with three mouths to feed and an ailing daughter, Malathi had no scope to stop and immediately started work as a Corporation sweeper – a job that has her wake up at 3am every day. “The schedule has changed, the challenges have grown, but the money is flowing back in, and that’s all that matters,” she says. “Now, I just want to make enough to send my daughter to college. She must grow up differently,” she says.
And then there’s Nandini, a postwoman spurring others like her to take up work in this male-dominated space, Maha Devi, a Dunzo delivery woman and her family’s sole breadwinner, and countless others who represent the slim, but powerful spirit of resilience and refusal to settle that every slum nurtures beyond the surface stories of abuse and poverty.
“It is what drove us to recognise women from these spaces,” says Sethulakshmi, managing director of the NGO. “Janaki Kannan who heads our children’s programme, came up with this idea, and we’d like to take it to more such communities. When women achievers from extremely diverse backgrounds are celebrated among their own neighbourhood, they spur many others to create a different lives for themselves.”