Chandigarh, October 4
The arid land of Rewari, a mud house of a farm labourer in Rolliavas village, which was home to a family of 22 who battled for sustenance every single day, and one woman who changed their lives-that’s the story of Mishri Devi (84).

She was honoured with the “Best Mother Award” under the Vayoshrestha Samman 2010 by the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment on Senior Citizen’s Day.

Ask her son, Haryana cadre 1985-batch officer Dhanpat Singh, about her and he says there’s a lot more to her than meets the eye. Illiterate and polio-afflicted, she stood up for her kids when her husband asked her to stop sending them to school. He wanted them to go out to graze cattle and work in the fields because of the family’s economic condition.

“My eldest brother had just completed Class X and my nine siblings, four brothers and five sisters, were still in junior school. She persuaded him to let us continue our studies. At the peak of summer, I remember her cutting and beating the chaff in the fields to get whatever little mustard she could after the harvesting season was over and sell the grain. With that money, she funded our education,” he narrates.

Maintaining that the only grain that used to come home was one-eighth of the produce from the field where his father was employed as crop sharer, Dhanpat Singh, the sixth of the siblings, says his family saw very hard times.

“Despite my mother’s handicap, I never saw her grumble. She took the good and the bad, the ups and downs of a large family and the fight for a better life in her stride. She taught us to believe in ourselves. I think that has been her most important lesson to us,” he says.

That’s why his eldest brother went on to become the first graduate of the village and an inspiration to other village lads. “He topped in college. At a time when girl education was unheard of, my sisters went to school. We are all well-settled because my mother did not give into pressure of running a home on a meagre income. She defied convention and sent us to school when it was not a priority in rural Haryana,” he adds.

When Dhanpat Singh cleared the elite Indian Administrative Services (IAS) and broke the news to her, Mishri Devi couldn’t fathom the extent of his achievement. “She stayed with me while I was Deputy Commissioner and saw my government house and car. She then realised I had achieved something big, but that’s about it. Till now, she can’t gauge the importance of the services. She’s happy because I am,” he says.

Mishri Devi still lives in her village. Her mud house has been replaced with a brick and mortar house. But that’s not important. What’s more important is that the family, from being plain ordinary is now a name to reckon with. And, it all began with her.