null This is a story of a family. An ordinary story. An ordinary family. The only reason I am telling it is because nearly three months after Gujarat continues to bubble with news of sporadic violence, the attempted cover-up of sexual crimes, social schisms and terrible conditions in relief camps, this story gives some idea of the kind of lives these events have disrupted.

About eighteen months ago, travelling through Gujarat, I met a middle-aged Muslim woman who worked as a bai in a maternity home. When I told her I was trying to meet local people for a study on social trends, she invited me home. Home was in a slum of Muslims and lower-caste Hindus such as Bhangis, Koris and Dheds (scavengers) close to the railway tracks.

The woman told me how she had come to the city over three decades ago (‘‘we just put up a tarpaulin and made a jhopdi’’). Her husband made fifty rupees then as a rickshaw driver; half of which he paid as rent for the vehicle. She worked as a housemaid and sold her jewellery to buy a pucca hut for Rs 25,000. In time, her three sons grew up, became drivers and shop assistants. The two daughters married. The family filled its roughly 7 by 5 foot room with a Godrej cupboard, a black and white TV, a two-in-one, casettes of film songs and qawalis, kitschy paintings, a goat and a cat. They also bought a room next door.

Two sons married. Their brides were only fifteen. Unusually, their consent had been sought by their parents and some covert pre-marital communication allowed between the couples. The women took up jobs as maids with Gujarati Hindu families in bungalows nearby and shared the housework at home. But there were plans for the future — to find a better house, open a small school with the help of an NGO or state aid. ‘‘There is a woman at the government kendra nearby who has the forms for such things,’’ Shehnaz, the younger daughter-in-law informed me. Mumtaz, the older one, was pretty and urbane but it was the big-built and coarse village woman Shehnaz who was the more spirited of the two.

While Mumtaz delivered five children, Shehnaz sneaked off after the birth of her second daughter to the maternity clinic without her mother-in-law’s knowledge and had an IUD inserted. When the need to keep a ghungat before her father-in-law made it difficult for the women to enjoy their favourite after-dinner saas-bahu serials, Shehnaz purchased a black and white TV from her earnings and installed it in the next room for the menfolk. She had also thought of getting a charkha from Khadi Bhawan (‘‘Then I can spin at home instead of working outside,’’ she said longingly.)

Shehnaz talked nostalgically of the early days of marriage and frequent visits to the cinema (‘‘only the air conditioned ones’’) with her husband; one of her daughters was even given a Punjabi name after a Kajol character. Her husband now had grown taciturn and withdrawn, she complained. Mumtaz’s husband though, she said teasingly, was still romantic, urging her to show me the butterfly-shaped make-up kit that he had recently bought her. Mumtaz blushed and confessed that she enjoyed trying to look like the models she saw on TV. Television seemed to be an important source of information about the outside world as was the neighbourhood. Someone next door for instance, had been doing a computer course and amidst much oohing and aahing I was shown an image the young man had created by superimposing his fiancee’s face on pictures of roses and hills.

But priorities when it came to spending money or anything else were unquestionably determined by the children. Thanks to local health activists, hygeine awareness was high and scarce resources were willingly spent on baby powder, doctors and boiling water at times of illness. As we talked, their kids sat on the tiny cot glued to cartoons that played in an alien language. ‘‘I want them to be educated,’’ said the seventh-pass Mumtaz firmly. ‘‘I wanted to finish college myself,’’ said Shehnaz, who studied up to the ninth, ‘‘but my husband did not allow it. He said ‘the world is very bad’’’. Later, sitting on the pocket-sized rooftop she would escape to when in need of privacy, she confessed to deeply regretting her limited education. But, she concluded firmly, ‘‘the world will change by the time my daughters grow up.’’