Meera and Lalita: A Sambhali Double Act

by Harini Varadarajan

The story of Meera and her daughter Lalita is an inspiration to all the girls of Rajasthan. It’s the story of a woman who broke the cycle of poverty and found her independence, a woman who not just wanted more for her girl child but went about getting it. It’s the story of a girl child getting an opportunity for education in a male-dominated society. And it’s the story of how the support of family can empower the women of an entire community when given an opportunity for education. Meera and Lalita’s story recounts the promise that Sambhali made to the women of a small village in Rajasthan. A promise that Sambhali continues to uphold.

Meera lives in a rural part of Rajasthan, India, a village called Setrawa where in 2007 the Sambhali organization established its first center. But her life story did not begin there. In the year 1947, during the partition of India and Pakistan, Meera’s grandfather’s family were among the many Hindu families that found themselves on the Pakistani side. Decades after, in the quest for a better life, her father made the difficult decision to relocate his family to India. This was in 1989 and Meera, one of his five daughters and two sons, was only 8 years old at that time.  The family had visa paperwork that allowed them to work in the city of Ahmedabad in the Western state of Gujarat. However, her father chose to relocate to the neighboring state of Rajasthan as the family only spoke Marwari which was more prevalent there and made it easier to find work. Although this created considerable issues for them during the early years, over time they were sorted out and the family lived in relative middle-class comfort. 

Meera dreamed of being a teacher, but her education included only two elementary school years at The Mother Teresa School in Balotra, followed by many years of self-study. Through sheer determination, she subsequently completed her education until 10th standard before she was married off at the age of 21 as was the custom in those parts. For this fundamental education, she credits her father who himself was an educated man. She recalls fondly that he always wanted all his children to be educated and well-spoken. Soon after, Meera found herself the mother of two boys and the youngest, a little girl. Her husband, though kind, was not an educated man and her father-in-law did not support the notion of educating women. In order to support the family, Meera and her husband opened a shop in Setrawa. Meera calls the shop a “fancy store” in which she would sell all kinds of nick-nacks that people could not buy anywhere else in the village. Meera would make monthly trips to Jodhpur, the neighboring big city, which was over two hours away by bus, to pick up the supplies for the store. Life in Setrawa carried on like this and Meera’s dream of becoming a teacher soon became a distant memory.  

Women in Setrawa and some other parts of Rajasthan are among the least educated in all of India. The average female age for marriage is 19 and only one in six girls finish secondary school. The women not only lack education but are also poorly informed, bound by societal pressures, and many are subject to domestic violence. Due to a lack of employment opportunities in the village, the men leave the village for days and even weeks on end leaving their wives to tend to the children and the elderly. Many of these men work for minimum wage in the construction industry in the neighboring cities, and when they return home tend to get drunk on alcohol to relieve their stress and are often physically abusive to their wives. The women of Setrawa had been trapped in this system until one fine day in 2007 when Sambhali’s programs first arrived at their village.

It was around the same time Meera had a revelation. She recalls the year 2007 as the worst year of her life. It was the year that her store business collapsed because the customers did not repay their loans, and she found herself alone with three hungry children because the family had to split up and her husband and father had to leave Setrawa to look for work elsewhere. Meera was determined to break the cycle of poverty and give her daughter a better chance in life. Providence arrived in the form of Sambhali, which opened its first primary education center in Setrawa in 2007.

This was the opportunity that Meera had been waiting for. She promptly enrolled her children into the free Primary Education Center and started attending the free English language workshops herself. This meant that Meera would have to take her children from 7am to 1pm to Sambhali’s Center rather than work at home. She had to fight with her father-in-law to go during the early days. But with the strong support of her husband who himself had completed his high school education after marriage, Meera succeeded in convincing her father-in-law about the importance of education for the children and the opportunity for her to earn an income through the vocational training she would receive at the Sambhali Empowerment Center while the children were at the Primary Education Center. At the Sambhali Empowerment Center women learned English, attended sewing training workshops, and were presented with a sewing machine at the end of the training program.

While Meera’s sons were on a path to receive high school education and were even considering going to college, the options for girls were still limited. Meera worried that her daughter Lalita would be left behind, until the first Sambhali Boarding Home opened in the city of Jodhpur in 2012. The boarding home provided an opportunity for girls aged 6-15 from impoverished families to live together and attend good schools at no expense to the families. Without hesitation, Meera enrolled Lalita into the boarding program that would be her home for the next decade. When asked how she could have entrusted Sambhali with the responsibility of her only daughter, she responded by saying that it was a huge leap of faith, but the alternative was simply not an option. She felt reassured when the staff and volunteers from Sambhali answered all her questions patiently and were transparent about their work. That Lalita’s cousin Nisha would also be joining Lalita in the boarding home also made it a much easier decision.

Lalita was only eight years old when she found herself away from her family at Sambhali’s Sheerni Boarding Home in Jodhpur. Although she was scared, she was certainly a chip off the old block – her strong and independent mother. She was determined to learn English and was grateful for the opportunity to study. She loved the camaraderie among the girls and having all their support when she felt lonely, which helped her overcome her homesickness during the initial days. When asked what the worst thing about the boarding school was, she laughingly says “Waking up at 5 am!”. Over time Lalita found her morning rhythm and as a teenager was even entrusted with an unofficial leadership role at the Sambhali Laadli Boarding Home, which opened in 2017 to house girls between the ages of 6 and 12. In this role, she was responsible for waking up the girls and getting their morning routine like bath time and making lunch boxes into action. Although the younger and newer girls from the Laadli program could often be naughty, she enjoyed being regarded as an older sister.

Lalita applied herself to her studies. She graduated high school in 2021 just as Sambhali expanded its operations to open the Abhayasthali Boarding Home for girls who had previously attended the Sheerni Boarding Home and were now in college. Lalita is currently pursing a bachelor of science degree and is studying chemistry, botany, and zoology. She works at one of the Sambhali Primary Education Centers in the afternoons and volunteers for other Sambhali programs, such as the Aadarsh workshops on sexual abuse in local schools, during her free time.

Lalita, just like her mother Meera, had always wanted to go to college and give back to her community. But unlike her mother, she grew up with complete faith that she would do so because she had the unflinching support of her mother who she knew would move mountains to get her daughter educated. Meera’s optimism and determination are a driving force behind Lalita’s success and certainly a force to be reckoned with. As far as Lalita’s marriage goes, Meera says that she is free to make her own choices and that she would protect Lalita from the pressures of the family and society for as long as it takes.

Meera also realized her dream of becoming a teacher. She now a paid English and Math teacher at Sambhali’s Primary Education Center. She is grateful to her husband for always supporting her dreams and believing in her choices. Together they re-opened their store in Setrawa earlier this year and Meera runs it part-time with her husband. During her monthly trips to Jodhpur where she shops for supplies for her store, she visits her daughter. Her older son studies in Italy where he has received a bachelor’s degree in computer science engineering and will soon start a master’s program in computer science, and her younger son is doing his bachelor’s degree in science.

Meera believes that all of this would not have been possible without the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity given to her family by Sambhali. She is most grateful to Govind Rathore, the founder of Sambhali, who she refers to affectionately as “Bhaiyya” or brother, for the education and opportunity that her daughter and other girls from financially poor families have been given. She is confident the change among the women of the village of Setrawa is for the better and the future generations will benefit from its impact. She urges the Sambhali team to continue their meaningful work of educating the women of Rajasthan as the first generation of college-going women will set the tone of positivity and opportunity for the future generations.  

The story of Meera and Lalita is inspirational and a testimony to the work done by Sambhali as it changes the possibilities for families like theirs in Rajasthan, India every single day.