Life, a tightrope walk

Parvesh Sharma in Sangrur

Each day, Prabhjot Kaur of Shahpur kalan curses herself for not studying. With her husband gone, she could have taken up some odd job, but today, an acre and a half is all she has to feed her family of three. The patch is leased out for Rs 75,000 every year. With that, the 32-year-old and her two daughters make both ends meet. The debt of Rs 4lakh that claimed her husband’s life two and a half years ago stands as it is. Ask Prabhjot how she plans to repay it, and she just stares into space.

Prabhjot says her husband, Sukhvir Singh, had taken a loan from an arhtiya. However, he had not been able to pay it back. The arhtiya had begun hounding Sukhvir. This went on for two years. By the end of it, he felt humiliated and could not find a way in which he could have repaid the loan. Prabhjot had an inkling that he was distressed, but she had never imagined he could leave her and their daughters behind and end his life. On June 30, 2016, when the family was out attending a function in the village, Sukhvir quietly returned home and hanged himself from the roof of their single room house.

Prabhjot does not know when and how much loan was taken. All she knows is he had taken it for farming and did not spend a penny on their home. The walls lie unplastered and there is just a board for door. After Sukhvir’s death, the arhtiya and his men began to show up at her door. He told Prabhjot that her husband owed him Rs 4 lakh and started pressurising her to pay him. Thankfully, the village came to her rescue. “The arhtiya wants his money back, but from where will the family repay it. They do not even have the money to even purchase wheat. We have assured the arhtiya that the village will pool money to help the family,” says Sukhchain Singh, a member of the village panchayat.

The state government’s debt waiver scheme too has been a bitter experience for her. Despite repeated rounds of offices and fulfilling of formalities like submission of her husband’s post-mortem report and other documents, Prabhjot has not been able to get her debt waived off. “I visited various offices in Sunam and Sangrur after the government announced its debt waiver scheme. However, our name has not been included in the list of beneficiaries. The officers say my husband had taken loan from an arhtiya and they were not covering private debt in the first round. I have been told that it will be covered in this round and have applied again,” she says. Prabhjot may have her hopes pinned, but Chief Agriculture Officer, Sangrur, Baldev Singh, says they have no information on waiving off private debt yet.

Meanwhile, for the past two years, each day has been a challenge for Prabhjot. Out of the  Rs 75,000 which come from the leased land, Rs 22,000 is spent on the education of the girls. Of the rest, a mere Rs 4,400 is all she gets to spend every month. She says the elder daughter understands what has happened, but the little one still insists on meeting her father sometimes and begins crying. She says the girls don’t make unreasonable demands, but, at times, long for toys that they see in other kids’ hands. At times like these, she can’t do much, but curse herself.