Nalgonda: Words failed Kanakamma. She could only fold her hands in a gesture of gratitude – meant for the hundreds of people who have come out forward to support her after her husband Kanakaiah, a farmer from Telangana, committed suicide.
“I got calls from London, Bengaluru, Delhi… I don’t know English or Hindi. So I could not talk to them,” she said. “Please convey that I am eternally grateful to all those people who have given me the courage to continue. Had it not been for them, my children would probably have lost another parent too.”
Just a week ago, the 28-year-old widow had been too depressed to eat.
Kanakaiah had hanged himself in February after repeated crop loss pushed him into debts he did not think he could ever pay back. In his last phone call, he had told her to take care of the children. The next time she saw him, he was hanging from a tamarind tree in their 2-acre farm in Kondareddycheruvu village of Nalgonda. The tree has since been cut, but the heartache will never go away.
The family had no money for even his last rites. When NDTV met Kanakamma six weeks after her husband’s death, the family was surviving on the rice donated for the rituals.
Kanakamma had not eaten for days. She was so weak that she felt cold in the searing 43-degree temperature of Nalgonda.
Now with the fresh financial and moral help from readers, Kanakamma says she has found the confidence to move forward.
She wants her two sons to get an education — “like the people who helped us, so someday they may help others”.
Hariprasad and Chandu are happy their mother has revived. But life is yet to return to normal for them.
13-year-old Chandu’s chest is drawn in and he cannot perform any strenuous physical task. “Pneumonia, doctors told us. I hope I can him treatment, so he is healthy and can study,” Kanakamma said.