Perseverance

If there is a person I am grateful for - it has got to be my mum. She was a product of the 1920’s  when women were frowned upon if they were seen outside their houses. That was an era where women had to be indoors and a career for them was unthinkable. 

However my mum got herself a teaching position before her marriage in a private school teaching Tamil. She was taunted by her relatives and neighbours, who felt the place for girls is the kitchen and girls should learn domestic skills and be prepared to run a home and take care of children. Eventually she had to agree to give up her career, marry and become a housewife. That satisfied her neighbors and relatives but there was none to help her out of her misery when she complained that her husband’s income was hardly enough to run a home. It appeared her neighbours and siblings were just waiting to end her carefree and happy life and push her into poverty. 

My father’s income was not sufficient. Besides his love for drinks, he did not have other vices. Employers of the past were also caring souls. My mother through her network of other housewives would know the actual paydays of the husbands. They would visit the office of the husbands and manage to collect as much of the wages of the menfolk before the men headedto the toddy shop. After a while the  employer  noticed what was going on and did not give the husbands their full wages. 

Sometimes the employer would call over to the employee’s house and hand over a large portion of the wages to the wife.These were before the days of the truck system which outlawed illegal deductions as spelt out in Sec.24 of the Employment Act 1955. My mum used to be very grateful for this act of kindness from the employer as otherwise a large portion of the meagre wages of my father would find its way to the toddy shop.  Despite my father’s failings my mum did not give up on the family as by then she had six children and she realised that the children only had her for support and none of her siblings or friends who had urged her to give up living with my  father really had any solution for the kids. 

She persevered through the hardships that she encountered and decided on ways to improve the family’s lot by borrowing from kind souls who lent her money despite knowing she had no independent means to settle the loans. I was a stubborn kid in my younger days and not realising the problems  my mum faced I used to throw tantrums and refused to attend school if my fees were not paid on time. 

She used to coax me to attend classes and on days when the fees are due she would accompany me to school and explain to the teacher the reasons for the delay in paying fees and plead with the teacher not to punish me as the delay  was through no fault of  mine. 

Despite the poverty she used to plant vegetables, breed poultry and sell apom to support the family. If not for her perseverance we would not have continued our education.  Of the 30 odd kids in the kampong at that time, I can proudly say that ours was the only home where the children had gone on to study up to Form Five. 

All contents (c) Ganapathy Ramasamy, mynameisgana@blogspot.com

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