Sheila Rane, 24, sits by the towering iron gates of Yerwada prison in Pune and yearns for the first of every month.
Sheila Rane, 24, sits by the towering iron gates of Yerwada prison in Pune and yearns for the first of every month. For, that is the only time of the month when she gets to see her 10-year-old daughter Pooja.
“Those 20 priceless minutes of ‘mulaakaat’ at the beginning of the month are what keep me going,”she says. Relatives are allowed to meet their kin lodged in prison for just 20 minutes every fortnight during the mulaakaat.
Officials from an observation home in Pune, where Pooja has been put up for the past year, apply for permission and bring her to Yerwada prison once a month.
“I could not meet the responsibilities of a mother,” Sheila says, with a sense of deep regret, when asked if she worries about her daughter.
However, Rane doesn’t regret the act that landed her in prison. Tired of domestic violence at the hands of her alcoholic husband, she picked up an iron rod and rained blows on her husband, who succumbed to his injuries.
“I suffered for two years. I couldn’t take it anymore,”she says matter-of-factly. Rane was sentenced to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment for the murder in 2005 in her hometown in Akola.
Pooja, a witness to the bloody violence that resulted in the death of her father and the arrest of her mother, however, has had her childhood robbed forever.
To make matters worse, Rane was forced to send her child to an institution. “My daughter never complains. But I know all about the harassment that goes on in an institutional home. I know she is living in hell,”she adds.
Ironically, when Pooja comes to meet her, there is a role-reversal of sorts. “Pooja always assures me that everything will be fine. She puts on a brave front for my sake,”says Rane.
With seven years of sentence still to serve, Rane saves every penny she earns from her prison chores — tailoring, gardening and kitchen work. “The money will fulfil my dream of marrying Pooja off,”she explains. Pooja will be 18 by the time Rane is discharged from prison.
“I want her to leave our horrible past behind and start life afresh. I want the groom to be a teetotaler, and someone who treats women with dignity,”she says with a deep conviction.
“Let my suffering end with me. I spoilt my life as well as my daughter’s. If I get another chance, I would live my life differently,”she says.
The name of the interviewee has been changed
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