Santosha she was named.. after the goddess who grants wishes
She is babli 's mom..
Somewhere the script went wrong as she lost both her parents and was left to to the mercy of (un)caring realtives for whom she was a burden..
Later she was married off to a man 35 years her senior, an asthma patient unable to work.. she is his third wife...
Santosha accepted her fate and bore three children to this ageing and ailing man, took on a poorly paid back breaking job in a factory and kept her family going..
It was not easy as they never found a permanent home, leading to the children not being able to go to school. Babli was the eldest child and she new intuitively that there was something wrong with her, she could see the little child struggling to breathe, her heart pounding so hard that she use to feel it would jump out of the frail chest.. The doctors told her babli would need surgery but she quietly filed that suggestion into the deep recess of her mind as she knew there was no way she could manage this..
She perhaps did send a silent prayer asking for a miracle, but with the burden of life weighing on her already tired shoulders, she soon forgot that prayer.. she had to just focus getting a meal for her family and medicine for her husband..
When she came into our office, we were suprised to see this tall dignified and smiling woman who quietly sat down. She told us about her life without any bitterness. She told us her husband was a good man, somehow it seemed as she was speaking of her 'fourth' child, one who needed as much care as the others.
Her demeanour was remarkable for one who had experienced so much sorrow and pain in her short life. She had come to thank us for babli..
There is a god for the lesser ones, a god that has strange ways but is not unkind.. Santosha had to wait nine years to see her barely worded prayer answered..
Babli has to live; a mother's prayer has to be fulfilled..
It is a matter of the credibility of the god of the lesser ones..
Is he listening?