SHUDRACHI

Chapter-2

In the winters of 1901, when the nights were chilling cold and dark. The fields of farmers were laid barren and stark and there was no hope and one by one everyone was dying of famine and hunger. Mavya was fourteen then.

Mavya and her family had accepted death.

And death came. Just not in the way they had thought. In the confines of their imagination death was dull and deceptive and quite peaceful. At least they would be free from this despair and poverty and helplessness. But they were dark times, so dark that death had to come in the form of white Englishmen straddled on horses, armed with guns and artillery, and taxes, which Mavya's family couldn't afford to pay.

Englishmen whipped the farmers, mercilessly. They hadn't got money from them, because there wasn't any. But when they departed from their small village, cursing, yelling, and whipping all the way, Mavya thought that doom had left, but she was proved wrong when many farmers didn't survive the assault, including her father.

It happened in front of her house, in front of her eyes. But she couldn't believe it. Even with all the whip marks, her father laid there on the ground bleeding and unmoving.

The whole village had mourned that day, and many days after that day, until Englishmen left, until independence.

The colonizers had spared the women and children, deeming them weak and worthless. They were all malnourished and skinny and black, not someone worthy of their fantasies.

She was weak. She couldn't save her father.Death came but not to all of them. But everyone has died that day. That day, Mavya had vowed to be strong and to fight.

Mavya had sworn a rebellion against the British in her heart, when she wasn't even remotely aware what that would mean.

*

1905, Kerala.

After the death of Mavya's father. Mavya took the responsibility of her home. They had lost their land to Britishers, her mother was devasted. They had nothing to eat.

What kept Mavya going was her father's dream, to educate her brother and make him somebody someday. She also wanted her brother to get out of this vicious cycle of poverty and education was the only way to do that.

She knew how to work in fields because she had been doing that since childhood. She also started working in upper-middle-class houses for more earning. Her mother also worked as laborers in other fields to feed the family. They were difficult days but her family survived.

One fortunate day, a bunch of ladies came to their villages, they were a part of the Swadeshi Association, it was a group of volunteers who was part of The Swadeshi Andolan. They were teaching girls and women how to make clothes from Charkha,(spinning wheel) and become a part of the Andolan.
They also explained that the Andolan not only include boycotting clothes but also produce indigenous entrepreneurship.

Most women were hesitant about it because cotton clothes were really expensive at that time, and they could not compete with imported clothes. But Mavya was desperate. A few other girls also joined the training after getting encouraged by the group.

In the three months of training, a group of fifteen ladies taught them about the mechanism of the spinning wheel. They said it would not only make women self-reliant, but it would also make the whole of India self-sufficient and independent.

They taught her many different things, but the gist was not the teaching.

The essence was the weapon that Mavya has acquired against the British. The spirit was the courage, that she gathered from hearing brave tales of Rani Laxmibai, Mangal Pandey, and freedom fighters of the Revolution of 1857, the courageous fights of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, and other revolutionaries against the Bengal partition.