The Bengal Renaissance - pg. 18

The author gives the pen-picture of a poor woman of cultivating
family, as if in her words, as follows:

"We cultivate and harvest the crops. With whatever remains
after payment of revenues, we shall maintain ourselves and
children round the year. A year of drought brings us very bad
days. We live on puffed rice from a poor variety of paddy
and even on boiled leaves of pulses and snails and mussels. We
pick up dried leaves and branches from bushes for fuel. We
pluck, process and spin cotton and get clothes for our wearing.
From here and there in the woods and fields we collect vegetables
and fruits and sell them in the weekly market to obtain a few
price. My husband works as daily worker here and there to
get a few more pies. This is all the money for us to pay the
weavers' mmaking charge and for salt and cooking oil.
We work for others to prepare their food, harvest their crops,
and husk their paddy into rice and collect the refuse for our own
consumption. We reckon a day as one of birth celebration if
we get a square vegetarian meal with rice. We cannot
provide ourselves with cloth to protect us, nor hair oil
for moistening. In winter, we cover the children with blankets
made of battered cloth and we, the couple, sleep on hay-strewn
bed using a mat of reeds as blanket. We can never afford the
luxury of having utensils or ornaments. If we can take our food
from earthen wares, put on red-coloured palm leaves for earrings,
a necklace of glass beabs, a pair of lead bangles in wrist,
and other lead ornaments in other parts of body, then we would
feel like being a queen. In spite of such great misery of ours,
the rulers would not remit a pie from the usual revenue
in years of drought and would not allow a day's delay in that
matter. Even if a few days be allowed as an exceptional case,
interest would be charged on the amount paid after the due date.
If we ultimately fail to clear the revenues, the messengers and
armed men of the Mandal Patwari, Izaradar, Talukdar and
Zamindar, would be sent by way of distrainment to sell out
the cows, bulls and calves and even the petty belongings like
blannkets of battered cloth, cane and bamboo sieves, baskets
etc. To the village money lender we pay ten times the interest
due and yet cannot get remission from the principal amount
borrowed. All our pleadings and supplications to them prove
of no avail. Of God, you destine the miserable to suffer such
plights, what have we done to harm your cause?"