: Braving Abandonment, Heroic Woman Tended Leprosy Patients for 20 Years #IndiaNEWS #Inspirational It’s a cold winter morning in the national capital. As a matter of routine Anita has woken up before

Braving Abandonment, Heroic Woman Tended Leprosy Patients for 20 Years #IndiaNEWS #Inspirational
It’s a cold winter morning in the national capital. As a matter of routine Anita has woken up before sunrise. She busies herself with making food for her three children. A little after 8. 30 am, she passes on the responsibility of holding guard to her eldest and leaves for work.
Later, Anita walks towards the main road and stations herself at the signal, where she spends the rest of her day begging for alms.
Asked why she doesn’t look for another job, she says, “Kaun naukri dega, didi? Hum tho kusth rogi hain (Who will give me a job? I am a leprosy patient).
On a good day, she says she earns about Rs 100.
Anita is among the 52 families in Delhi’s Anand Parbat area that houses close to 30 people affected by leprosy.
Anita and her three children.
These families are treated like outcasts by society, and any contact with them is shunned – all because they are leprosy patients. It is hard to imagine that this systemic isolation of leprosy patients by the larger society continues in 21st century India.
But, for all these families, Jaya Reddy is a true guardian angel. Having been brought up by parents afflicted with leprosy, Jaya has an innate ability to understand and empathise with their plight. Speaking to The Better India, Jaya says, “This is my life – I don’t know any better, and wouldn’t trade it for any other life either. �?
Adding to this, Anita says, “Jaya didi is a messiah for us. �? She adds, “I am the sole earning member of my family. My husband is no more and I have three children to support. While on most days I go out to beg, there are days when I am unable to. On all such occasions, Jaya didi brings us ration and food. Even the books that my children need for school are provided by Jaya didi. �?
Jaya’s father worked tirelessly for the community, until his death a few years ago. “I started from where he left,�? says Jaya. At the colony, there are leprosy patients aged 30 years and above and each one of them has a different degree of disability caused by the disease.
‘I was shunned as a child. ’
An image from Anand Parbat, a colony where leprosy affected patients reside in Delhi.
Recollecting her childhood, Jaya says, “I have faced immense pain while growing up. People would always look at me as though I was strange. Even when my parents needed help dressing their wounds, they would be turned away from hospitals and clinics. �? This taught Jaya the need to be resilient. Even in school Jaya says that once the teachers came to know that her parents were affected by leprosy, she was treated differently.
“I was made to sit on a bench all alone.