Palike’s sheer apathy, abject poverty took life of civic worker

A measure of the extent of poverty-linked misery that 40-year-old pourakarmika S Subramani and his family lived in is only now unravelling. Subramani had committed suicide on Sunday.

Subramani’s wife Kavitha at her rented residence in Palace Guttahalli | vinod kumar T

BENGALURU: A measure of the extent of poverty-linked misery that 40-year-old pourakarmika S Subramani and his family lived in is only now unravelling. Subramani had committed suicide on Sunday. The BBMP had not paid him his salary over the past seven months and his family struggled to make ends meet.Just a few days after school opened, Subramani’s 10-year-old son Darshan has returned home crying as he was punished because he did not have school shoes to wear despite repeated reminders. He had been made to stand in the school ground for almost the entire day. Subramani did not even have money to buy shoes for his little son. He himself walked barefoot for want of footwear.

With tears welling up in her eyes, Subramani’s wife Kavitha told The New Indian Express on Thursday that her husband was terribly upset over his predicament that prevented him from looking after the basic needs of his wife and two children, aged 14 and 10.Days after Darshan complained to his father about not having shoes, Subramani personally went to the school and, with folded hands, appealed to the school authorities not to punish him again. He told them that he would try to buy shoes for his son as soon as possible. “But that day never came and my son still goes to school without shoes,” says Kavitha.

The grief-stricken widow is, meanwhile, struggling to eke out a living. She is angry with the civic body and says that she is not sure whether it would give her a job. “My husband was never given gloves in 18 years. He had happily told me that they were going to give him a uniform as he was appointed as BBMP employee in January. But they never did! Should I believe that BBMP officials will give a job to me?”