NEW Delhi: Every night Darshan Kaur returns home after a grueling days’ work in East Delhi’s Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital and finds to her dismay that her three children have invariably cried themselves off to sleep she has to wake them up and feed them before putting them back to bed. By then it is past midnight
Darshan Kaur is a widow a “1984 riot widow as some would like to put it Her husband a three wheeler driver was killed when a murderous mob in Tilokpuris Block32 raided their house in November 84.
She found herself all alone after her husband was done to death. She saved her life as well as her children’s by fleeing the area along with other victims. Later Darshan Kaur along with other widows was allotted a flat by the Delhi Administration in Tilak Vihar.
But with the loss of the breadwinners the immediate problem before them was earn a living and somehow feed their children.
“Much to their succor after many days of uncertainty the Delhi Administration had come with a job package for riot victims employing them in schools offices banks and hospitals. AS most of the widows were literate they were appointed as Ayas nursing orderlies’ pens and “water woman cum mails” Darshan Kaur was offered the post of nursing orderlies in the Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital. As the distance from Tilak Vihar to the Hospital is almost 20kmandasthejob required them to post odd hours the women all with small children refused to take up the offer. However following a promise from the then Lu Governor that they would be transferred to nearby hospitals within six months the widows accepted the jobs with apprehensions
That was almost five years ago “The administration has a yet no fulfilled its promise despite a number of reminders to all and sundry who mattered.
The widows meanwhile have to face untold difficulties. Arriving home late is of course the major one but problems that have cropped up due to this are equally serious. “The main worry of the widows is that they have no time to devote to their children what with spending at least out of home four of them in crowded DTC buses. Darshan Kaur and the other widows expressed fears that their children would become wayward without a parent to guide them. Many of the children have already fallen into bad company. “If only we had jobs close by and that too day job we would be able to do some justice to the kids” Darshan Kaur said.
Another problem arising out of being out so late into night is the perennial threat of being molested on the streets and in DTC buses. All the widows had incidents of eve teasing and even molestation to narrate. They said people thought they were “easy 10 tease and molest” because they were widows. Darshan Kaur alleged that recently one night when she and another widow Maya Kaur were returning home from the Hospital they were molested by some boys of the Hariman Basti in Tilak Vibar. The women had caught one of the boys and handed him cover to the police she said. But to their surprise the very next day the police released him. A complaint made since then won the area ACP and SHO has apparently not merited any reply so far.
Increasingly disillusioned by the apathy of the authorities and not willing to watch their children going from bad to worse with neglect the widows are now thinking of absenting themselves from their work if they are not transferred to places near their homes.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 17, 1992
