Shabnam (name changed) had to suffer the pain of selling toys and snacks that she couldn’t afford for her child.

The youngest in a household of five siblings and being the only daughter, one would have thought that life for Shabnam would be easy and fun-filled. But the social construct and her family’s poverty dished out a different story for her.

The elder brothers and their wives treated her as a burden. Manual labourers all, Shabnam was seen as a burden in a household that struggled to live a day at a time. She was married off at an age in which she was supposed to be in school and to play with her friends.

Her husband’s family lived in a neighbouring village and was just as poor. The story for her, therefore, remained the same. Within a year, she had become the mother of a daughter. She couldn’t provide a son.

One day, she found her husband bringing home a second wife. The next thing she knew, she had the choice of going back to her parents with her daughter or get thrown out on the streets. With her daughter in mind, she chose to go back to her mother, knowing fully well the step-motherly treatment that awaited her.

Back in her parents’ home, her sisters-in-law treated her like their maid. But one of her brothers took pity and gave her Rs 200, a princely sum for them, to buy lozenges and sell to the boys of the village school.

She started off with her business. Being a mother, it was a pain not to be able to offer her daughter a lozenge that she was selling. Giving away one single piece would have meant that much less of earning. She was noticed by a local NGO involved in sustainable development work. She was given Rs 5000 to set up a roadside stall. She started selling tea, toast and omelettes as the customers demanded. While she couldn’t yet afford an egg for her daughter, she was selling omelettes to her customers, dreaming every day of a future in which her daughter would go to a proper school and wouldn’t have to face her plight.

Shabnam’s story doesn’t get repeated much. Subsequently, she got micro-loans, and her father gave her a small piece of land that couldn’t be put to any use by their reckoning. She built a tea stall on that plot and got a refrigerator from a soft drink multinational. She is saving. And yes, she gets to provide proper food to her daughter.

Hers has been a story of grit and leveraging every single bit of help to create a sustainable income stream. But there are a million others who suffer what no parent should suffer – not being able to offer even a simple lozenge to their child while selling it to others.