“My family left me to die,

BUT I’VE FOUND MY HAPPINESS”

"My wrinkled countenance reflects my misery,
my dirt-lined nails exude my toil.
I'm.
A mother. A daughter.
A chaste. A sinner.
A women. An Indian."

The other day when I was out to capture poverty dwelling in slums for a photography contest, I met Anwari.

Anwari, 50, huddles around the dark, dirty sludge-laden meandering lanes of the Naza market, in Lucknow, day and night, playing a waste-picker.  In between gathering all dirt and sludge, the frail wrinkled woman smiles, and agrees to pose for me when Jahan, her best friend joins her. United by a common fate, the two women engross themselves in work and chatter, cherishing a friendship that goes beyond age, work hours and gossip.

Anwari’s parents abandoned her when she was in her metric. Being a girl and the only child to her parents proved fatal for her. Too young to shoulder the burdens of an unsupporting family and teenage trauma, she smiled through it all 40 years of life, with Jahan, as a waste gatherer!

It’s been five-years-and-a-half since Anwari was diagnosed with the cancer of the nasopharynx (nasal part of the throat). Back then, as a school girl in a village, she’d dismissed the headaches and fever as common flu. To avoid taunts from her alcoholic father, she suffered in silence. It was only when Jahan saw traces of blood running down Anwari’s nose, she realized something was horribly wrong with her best friend and she took her to a doctor. “I was going mad with pain. I’d scream for hours,” Anwari shudders. Tired of her outburst, Jahan decided to take her to her village, where her parents lived.

Jahan’s friendship brought Anwari a temporary relief, but her parents abandoned her for life this time.

“They don’t want me to live with them,” says Anwari. “Though I have explained that cancer isn’t contagious, they think they’ll get it from me.” Unable to bear the humiliation she faced every day, Anwari tried to commit suicide, and once again was consoled by Jahan.

A convulsion of pain ran across the length and breadth of my body and I sat there frozen. To begin a lighter conversation with Anwari, I spent an hour with her chatting about everything from her health to her favorites. Soon the old woman transformed to a bubbly teenager. Slowly the conversation drifted to Azam, a man in his late fifties, Anwari’s co-worker and also a cancer patient.

The old man is thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. Anwari considers him the perfect man for her. They are together all day. Oblivious to others, they find solace in each other. Anwari is wary of talking about him, but the shy smile at the mention of his name is testimony to the surreal bond they share at the second innings of their age. The duo is unaffected by the glares of the society. “He understands my pain better than anyone ever can, barring Jahan,” says Anwari. Azam has given her hope for a future she did not believe in. “I asked him, jokingly, if he’d marry me, and he said he would if he had his own house,” she blushes.

P.S. – Anwari and Azam are currently undergoing treatment at a local hospital, courtesy Jahan.