Every day, beside Jai Stambh Chowk in the town of Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh, a modest food cart opens for business, selling sabudana vada and khichdi. The person behind it is just 26 years old — Dwarka Bambure. Her face carries the weariness of hard work, but her resolve has not cracked. Her life has been one blow after another, and lately a fresh worry has closed in on her: a loan she took to build a home, whose installments she can no longer pay.
Dwarka sums up her situation in her own words: “मैं जब मां के गर्भ में थी तब पिता ने दूसरी शादी कर ली. बचपन कठिनाई में गुजरा फिर कम उम्र में ही शादी हो गई. पति भी शराबी निकला और उनकी मौत हो गई. अब बेटी की पढ़ाई के लिए दुकान चला रही हूं और लोन कंपनी परेशान कर रही है.” In short — abandoned by her father, married off young, widowed by an alcoholic husband, and now running a stall for her daughter's education while a loan company hounds her.
Abandoned Before She Was Even Born
Dwarka's struggle began before she ever drew breath. According to her, when she was just two and a half months along in her mother's womb, her father walked out, remarried and went to live with his second wife. Her mother returned to her own parents' home and settled there. From that point, a single mother's fight for survival began.
Her mother took up daily-wage labour, working through every hardship to raise Dwarka. She educated her daughter enough to handle small office tasks. Today, Dwarka lives in a rented room in a colony in Balaghat with her young daughter.
A Brief Relief in Marriage, Then Alcohol Took It All
With responsibilities mounting at home, Dwarka was married off at a young age, during the Corona period. She hoped marriage might finally bring some calm to a difficult life — and at first it did. Her husband earned a living, she worked in an office, and together they ran the household. A few years later, they had a little daughter.
That happiness did not last. Her husband fell into alcoholism — drinking daily and quarrelling at home became routine. Alcohol hollowed out his body from within, and his immunity grew so weak that once he fell ill he could not recover. Eventually, one illness took his life. After his death, Dwarka was left with nothing but her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter.
She Quit Her Job and Started Her Own Cart
Now Dwarka faced the question of raising her two-and-a-half-year-old child alone. Sitting in grief would change nothing, and that child became her reason to live. To care for her daughter and give her a father's love along with a mother's, Dwarka left her job. Then, with a small loan, she set up a cart selling sabudana khichdi and vada.
Slowly, time eased the wounds. Her daughter grew older, and it was for her sake that Dwarka kept working day and night.
The Dream of a Home, and the Weight of Debt
Dwarka wanted to better her life step by step. Her dream was to move out of the rented room and into a home of her own. With that hope, she turned to the municipality's ongoing housing scheme, under which a house was to be granted after depositing 1 lakh 80 thousand rupees.
She reasoned that her business was doing well and the installments would be manageable, so she borrowed roughly that same amount. But the very cart on which she had staked this decision saw its sales drop as the heat intensified. It reached the point where even running the household became a struggle. On top of that, the loan company keeps pressing her for payments, pushing her into mental stress.
Even so, Dwarka refuses to give up. She trusts herself — the woman who has faced so many hardships until now believes she will fight her way through this one too.
