OURS NOT TO REASON WHY: Lata, widow of Phutane

When Kavudu Rajeshwar Phutane, 40, walked into his four-room hut at 7.30pm on a Friday, no one felt anything amiss.

His son was playing with friends in the village, and the daughter was watching television at the neighbour’s. Phutane didn’t ask about either.

He was moody. He didn’t talk much. He didn’t acknowledge his wife’s cue that dinner was on the way.

He shut himself in the tiny store-cum-room, away from everyone.

Yet, it didn’t strike his family that something was wrong.

Apparently, Phutane had been that way for nearly 20 years. He hardly conversed with his wife and children. He rarely shared the way he felt, and the way he thought.
So, when he opened a can of pesticide and drank it all up, he merely became another statistic in the rising number of farmers killing themselves across India. Phutane’s suicide occurred in Wadki village of Yavatmal district in Vidarbha, Maharashtra, on September 24. The state elects a new Assembly on October 13, and the problems of Phutane and other farmers like him is one of the big poll issues.

Phutane didn’t wait for the election to be over. The pain he felt had evidently exceeded the resources he could command for coping with the pain. In that one last desperate act, Phutane suddenly, and completely, eclipsed everything he had done in life earlier.

“We were married 22 years, and in all that time he didn’t talk much. He was by turns happy and irritable. He was moody. I found it odd but what could I do?” says Lata, Phutane’s widow.

Her husband was not illiterate. He had studied till Class X. He had also trained to be a tailor. In effect, he could do something more than just till the land. But, Phutane chose the family way: he went into farming.

“He used to handle six acres earlier. But three years ago, the land was divided equally between his elder brother and him. We got three acres. He used to till all the six acres though only half belonged to us now,” says Lata.

Phutane grew cotton, soya bean, and arhar dal in his three acres. Two days after he died, the farm has an innocent air. It’s green all around, there’s plenty of life in the soil, and it’s difficult to believe that hassles related to this pretty piece of land could have driven a man in the peak of his life to suicide.

Lata has now given the farm on lease. Her son Niruti, 15, is a bit of a problem child, and has not shown interest in farming. Her daughter Durga, 18, who is Lata’s favourite, is “ready for marriage”. Someone else, outside the family, will till the land for Lata and give her a share of whatever the earnings are.

Apparently the land demanded more than it gave. “He (Phutane) had taken loans from a private money lender (the shahukar) and the bank. In all, he owed about Rs 50,000-60,000. He always kept things to himself. Never shared problems. I came to know about the loans only when he began grumbling about repaying this much, and that much,” says Phutane’s widow.

Did men ever come home to demand money? “I don’t know. If anything happened, it was outside. He never let problems come home,” says Lata. “Crop failed for two consecutive years. But he never told me a thing. He would tell his friends,” she adds. According to her, her husband did not let his problems out. “He kept it to himself.”
One of his friends claims he told Phutane to sprinkle pesticide in his farm and take some money home. “There was hardly anything to eat at his place. When he died, he didn’t have a penny,” he says as he returns from the riverbank where they have just completed a set of the rituals associated with Phutane’s death.

Some of Phutane’s traits are in his son. Niruti, who performs the rituals, can’t relate to his family. Just like his father.

“He hardly attended classes. He failed three years. His classmates had moved on, and he said he was ashamed of hanging around in the same class. He began to pretend that he went to school, and would return at the time school got over. When his father got to know, he got him out of school. He goes to help in a shop, and will hopefully earn something,” says Lata.

Didn’t Phutane want to talk to her about Niruti’s problems? Did he not want to contribute at home? “He (the husband) was an angry person. He could be violent. When we told him about Niruti, he beat him up and dragged him all the way to school. Even Durga (the elder sister) used to beat him, and tell him to study. What was the use?” Lata says.

The relentless demands of life are already making her think ahead. “Durga is to get married. How will I handle it?”

That’s one thing Phutane won’t need to worry about.

Vijay Simha