Maanya Anand- Week 6
The Prisons We Broke by Baby Kamble.
In this autobiography, Baby Kamble talks about her life and family as a Mahar. She starts off by talking about how her father was a contractor and at times there was a lot of money in the house and at times there was no money. This was because her father liked living on merit more than he liked living on money. This used to frustrate her mother a lot because there were times that they could not even eat one meal and lived in extreme poverty. Further, she also describes how people in the village would take a bath. they would chew up pieces of coconut and the mixture of the chewed up coconut and saliva was rubbed into the hair of the children and themselves. This mixture was washed off with extremely hot water which not only burned their scalps but also helped in killing off the lice on their heads. These procedures were extremely painful, especially for the young children and were a painful ordeal. Further, she also spoke about how the young girls, including herself had to go wash the saris of the older women in the river/lake while they would take a bath. They would scrub it with mud and then thrash it against the rocks to clean it. Further, these saris would also be covered with lice and eggs of the lice and they would have to manually scrub it off the saris before taking it back to the women. These women would also wash their hair with the same coconut and saliva mixture and clean themselves of the lice.
In this autobiography, Baby Kamble talks about her life and family as a Mahar. She starts off by talking about how her father was a contractor and at times there was a lot of money in the house and at times there was no money. This was because her father liked living on merit more than he liked living on money. This used to frustrate her mother a lot because there were times that they could not even eat one meal and lived in extreme poverty. Further, she also describes how people in the village would take a bath. they would chew up pieces of coconut and the mixture of the chewed up coconut and saliva was rubbed into the hair of the children and themselves. This mixture was washed off with extremely hot water which not only burned their scalps but also helped in killing off the lice on their heads. These procedures were extremely painful, especially for the young children and were a painful ordeal. Further, she also spoke about how the young girls, including herself had to go wash the saris of the older women in the river/lake while they would take a bath. They would scrub it with mud and then thrash it against the rocks to clean it. Further, these saris would also be covered with lice and eggs of the lice and they would have to manually scrub it off the saris before taking it back to the women. These women would also wash their hair with the same coconut and saliva mixture and clean themselves of the lice.
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