FROM DUST TO HEARTS!!!

She was nine months preg­nant when her abusive hus­band, 20 years older than her, kicked her out of the house and into a cow shed in Navargaon village of Wardha District. He expected her to be kicked by the cows just like he himself had done a few minutes ago. The 20.year-old battered woman al­ready a mother of three, fell unconscious on the ground. When she regained consciousness, she realized she had already given birth to her baby girl. She also saw a cow stand­ing over her and her newborn baby, sheltering and protecting them The scared woman picked up a sharp-edged stone and hit the umbilical cord 16 times to finally snap it from her body. Then, she mustered courage and walked a few kilome­ters to her mother's home, her just-born infant in her arms. But her mother showed her the door. She was after all 'chindi’ (a torn piece of cloth) to her mother right since her birth.

Sindhu, who was to later become the Sindhutai or maai or the mother of the orphans to the world, took shelter in a crematorium that night where a dead body was being burnt. Unable to control her and her daugh­ter's hunger pangs, she picked up the flour offered to the corpse (pin­daan) after its relatives had left, kneaded it and baked a bhakri (chap­atti) over the fire of the burning corpse and ate. Life was happening to her in ways she had not imagined.

She traveled a lot in trains singing and begging, and shared the food she received with those who had nothing to eat. "I used to be scared of men when I would alight from the trains late at night. I was only 20. I often contemplated com­mitting suicide," says Sindhutai. “But one night, extremely tired, I got down from the train and sat in a corner a very big roti in my hand. I heard a beggar cry and say that he was sick, dying and had no one. He wanted someone to put two drops of water in his mouth. I walked up to him and said, 'Baba, why die with just water? I have a roti, you eat it, drink water and then die'." She fed him and gave him water. The beggar survived. "He did not die ! And that set me thinking: 'If a little help from me could save his life, why do I want to die? I can help people survive'. That day changed my life”.

Scared of being picked up by men in the dark of the night, Sindhutai would often spend the night at ceme­teries. “People were afraid to come there at night and sometimes, people who saw me would scream 'bhoot bhoot' and run away. Their fear would keep me safe. Zindabad shmashan, she says.

One day         she found a 16-year-old orphaned boy, Deepak, on a railway track. “I felt my daughter too could have met such a fate, and took him under my care. He became nay first son," she says. Before she knew, Sindhutai had become the mother of 18 adopted children. Her brood was growing. So, after three years, she gave away her own daughter, Mamta to Shrimant Dagaduseth Halwai Trust of Pune. "I feared my children would feel that I loved my own daughter more than them," she says.

A winner of over 750 awards including one from the President Shri Pranab Mukherjee, Sindhutai continues to travel from village to village to give lectures and earn. Money."Bhashan hai to ration hai," says the 69-year-old brilliant orator. "I share my experiences with people and tell them that I have learnt to live despite all odds, they must learn to live too. After the speech, I spread the pallu of my sari and beg for alms to feed and educate my children. Till date, the government has not given me any grant. Even when I was felicitated by the present government, they took from me in writing that I would not ask for a grant if I was to be felicitated".

After 15 years of homelessness, her children got the first roof on their head when a few tribals Sind­hutai had helped, gave her apart of their land to live on. When people began asking her for receipts for the money they gave her, Sindhutai real­ized she had to register an NGO, something she was unaware of. So she formed and registered her first NGO, Savitribai Phule Girls’ Hostel under the Foundation, Vanvasi Gopalkrushna Shikshan Evam Kree­da Prasarak Mandal in Chikaldharain Amravati. Today her children run four NGOs and Deepak her first adopted son who refused  to leave her on growing up, has named the sec­ond one, Mamta Bal Bhawan, after her daughter, Mamta.. Sindhtai has also formed a cow shelter Gopika Gai Rakshan Kendra to save old cows that are being sent to the slaughter houses. She brings them to the shelter and cares for them.

"Even today, the food, education and medical expenses of the children - all depend on maai’s speech­es. The day she stops speaking, money will stop coming in," says Law graduate Vinay Sindhutai Sapkal. "We have never seen God but for us maai is God. I was a one and-a­-half year old child when maai saw me lying the dead body of my mother at a railway station. She adopted me and performed the final rites of my mother, a stranger to her. She paid for my studies and got me married to a software engineer last year," he adds. Unlike in other or­phanages, Sindhutai’s children stay with her till they get a job and get married.

Filmmaker Ananth Mahadevan's film on her life, Mee Sindhutai Sapkal, received four national awards."Her life seemed so unreal," says Mahadevan. "A cow standing over her newborn to shelter her is the cow shed, and then she going to a graveyard and eating the offering made to the corpse by cocking it over funeral pyre shocked the wits out of me. Even for cinema, her life was so full of melodrama that I decided to tone it clown. It was difficult to decide what to keep in the film and what not to." he adds.

Says Sindhutai, “Today, I have 282 sons- in-law and 41 daughters-in-law. In these 42 years, I have raised 1200 children". When you ask Sindhutai where did she get her courage from, she says in a matter-of-tact tone: "From life beta. And from hunger. Hunger gave me courage".

CESA, Mumbai salutes her strength and courage to fight against all the odds not only for her own survival as well as became an instrument who gave live to thousand of orphans.

On the eve of International Women’s day (8^th March), CESA Mumbai extends its sincere gratitude and appreciation to the living legend who inspires several to be bold and courageous and to solemnly believe in " Live And Let Live" with dignity.