''Do you call this living? Even death is better than this humiliation"

Even today, the memories bring tears of shame to her eyes. She was paid to clean dry toilets each day, by physically scraping the human excreta that accumulated on the latrine floors, and carrying it away in a basket. Several months pregnant, Saroj one day climbed a narrow wooded staircase to reach the latrine in one home. She slipped and her foot broke, and she lay helplessly in agony below. But her employers — of many years — were unwilling to lift her even in this state, because they believed her touch was polluting. Finally they picked her up with a pincer of logs, and her family took her to the local dispensary. She wept bitterly that day. “Do you call this living? Even death is better than this humiliation.”

From an heartrending article by Harsh Mander in The Hindu.

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