BIHAR: Lalita Devi could never have imagined that bidding adieu to her alcoholic husband will give her a new lease on life. Sick and tired of the man’s self-destructive lifestyle, the 42-year-old resident of Samastipur district in Bihar just picked up bag and baggage one fine day in April 2005 and left home, hoping that her decision would give her three children a chance at a better future.
Without any money or food, she boarded a train from Nazirganj station but got down at Samastipur when one of the children, Gunjan, started crying out in hunger. She sat at the station all day, cursing her life, when a woman, selling used clothes at the platform nearby, approached her.
The elderly woman sheltered her at her home in Saari village under Ujiyarpur block in the Samastipur district. Gradually, she began seeking Lalita’s help to sell used clothes at the railway station and also look after her home in her absence.
As time passed by, the woman pushed Lalita to earn more money for her kids’ education and development. “When the children grew up, there was an urgent need of money to run the family. I then joined a nearby cloth stitching centre at a monthly salary of Rs 1,500,” Lalita Devi recalled.
It proved to be a turning point in her life. Starting with a small saving of Rs 5,000-6,000, she decided to start her own business in 2017, making ‘jholas’ (bags) from cloth pieces. Soon enough, she began earning a good profit as orders came in from nearby areas.
“It all happened about two years before the death of my husband,” Prem Chand Paswan,” she said. She went on to open a shop in her son’s name, ‘Avinash Jhola Udyog’, at Bahadurpur in Samastipur town. Today, she has four stitching machines churning out the bags and has a dozen women employees helping her.
Last year, Lalita received orders to produce bags worth Rs 10 lakh from Begusarai, Khagaria, Muzaffarpur, Samastipur and Darbhanga districts in Bihar and Ranchi in Jharkhand. The raw material is supplied to Lalita’s production unit from Muzaffarpur. Earlier, she had to depend on traders from Kolkata in West Bengal for it
“We get online orders as well. Thank God, we are getting more and more orders for the supply of bags made of cloth pieces. Though orders are also placed for bags made of plastic, we don’t encourage them for environmental reasons,” Lalita said with a smile on her face.
While her two sons – Nitish Kumar (27) and Avinash Kumar (25) –are lending support to their mother to run the business, her daughter Gunjan is preparing for civil services examinations in New Delhi. The latter shifted to the metropolitan city soon after completing her graduation in Mathematics from a Samastipur college.
“I want to fulfil the dreams of my mother who has worked hard to run the family all alone. I will leave no stone unturned to achieve my goal. I will give my 100% to my studies while preparing for one of the country’s toughest examinations conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC),” Gunjan, who was in town to meet her family, said.
Though Gunjan had gone to the national capital in 2019, she had to return home due to the Covid-induced lockdown. She returned to the national capital after things turned normal. “I know it’s my mom’s hard-earned money. So I am very much conscious about my responsibility towards the family,” she added.
Based on transactions in Lalita’s bank accounts over the last five years, a nationalised bank loaned Rs 2 lakh for her business about three months ago. With a fresh loan from the bank, Lalita now plans to expand her business. “Capital is the first criterion for any business. I hope we will engage more women with our business,” she asserted.
Lalita turned a bit emotional when asked about the problems faced by her in day-to-day life in the absence of her husband. “Finding me alone, people used to harass me on one pretext or other. But I was not bothered as I had to move on my path to achieve my goal, which I have,” she said with gusto.