Long walk to freedom: From a village to a liberating paycheck
The young woman from the Malayalitribe had lost her father when she was three years old, and her family was forced to seek shelter in her grandparent’s home
Nestled in the lush Jawadhu hills of Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvannamalai district, Vennila Palani grew up mired in a fog of bias. The young woman from the Malayalitribe had lost her father when she was three years old, and her family was forced to seek shelter in her grandparent’s home. A thatched hut shared by around a dozen people, her mother, brother and her shared space with five uncles and grandparents. There was no toilet. Vennila had to walk into the forests twice every day.
The government school was another arduous walk away and had classes only till standard 10. “I was the only ST student in class. Other students from the most backward and backward communities would point towards me and ridicule. Being tribal was the only identity I was given,” Vennila said. “It hurt that I was isolated. But what could I do?”
Her only recourse was to focus on academics. She scored decently on her school-ending examinations and convinced her family to let her continue her education. It wasn’t easy. Money was tight – her mother worked as a labourer and earned ₹200 on a good day – but she went to Arani, 70 km away, to continue her studies in an all girls government school.
By that time, her brother’s liver and kidney were failing. “I was missing home. I was scared about my brother. They didn’t have the means to come and visit me while other parents were able to come and see my classmates,” she said. Nevertheless, she managed to secure a seat with a scholarship for ST students at a private engineering college in Vellore.
In college, she chose civil engineering. “We lived in my grandmother’s hut all our lives. I wanted to build a house for my mother and set up a shop for her so at least she can sit and work,” said Vennila. “I thought that civil engineering was a course that teaches us to construct houses. So I wanted to study that,” she said, laughing.
Vennila worked briefly in a garment factory in Erode but her brother’s death in 2019 shackled her to her ancestral hut. “We couldn’t overcome my brother’s death. So I stayed so at least my mother and I have each other,” she said.
Working as a labourer alongside her mother for four years, she felt her dream of a better life slipping away. Then, on the advice of her school headmaster, she applied for a skill development programme run by the state government. This April, the state sent Vennila to an IT company in Bengaluru for a three-month internship, which led to a permanent position with a Chennai-based German firm.
Her first salary of ₹19,000 smelt like freedom. She still has to be on her feet eight hours a day loading and unloading a machine and her mother is still a labourer working the rural jobs programme. “But I now have the independence I could have never once dreamt of. My dreams are slowly coming true.”
She knows her exposure has been limited, and her education constrained by her marginalised background and poverty. But she is determined to work towards a life of freedom for herself and her mother. “Independence Day was little more than seeing a flag hoisted in school. But now, I know that only independence can bring me happiness,” she said. “It’s like seeing a whole new world open up.”