AAJI’S LUNCHBOX
A medal. A treasure chest. A bank. An album. A shrine. When a lunchbox holds witness to the life of a survivor.
The lunch box sat in the middle of the sugarcane field, looking like a prehistoric UFO. Part copper, part brass. Five floors of carved containers, held by a side clip. Sunlight bounced off its metal body, giving off an olive-gold haze.
A Medal
The lunchbox was a family heirloom of Maya Ghule, a social justice leader from the denotified nomadic tribe (DNT) of Beed, in drought-hit Marathwada.
70 years ago, Maya’s grandmother (Aaji) had stepped into her husband’s home with two saris and a five-storeyed tiffin carrier – the worthiest object that her parents owned. Aaji was ten then. The lunchbox was her medal for marrying the sturdiest sugarcane cutter in the village.
Every year, Aaji and Ajoba (grandfather) loaded their entire home on a bullock cart and migrated to the sugarcane farms of zamindars and politicians. They set up a temporary shack on the peripheries of the fields, and lived under the open skies, with a cloth sheet for cover, and two earthen pots to cook and store water.
For six months, seven days a week, 18 hours a day, the couple harvested large tracts of sugarcane fields with bare hands and machetes. They were one in an army of thousands who lived, birthed, and withered in these farms.
A Treasure Chest
In those months of harvest and hell, Aaji used the lunchbox as a treasure chest of ornate objects: a copper ring, a kajal box, a carved wooden comb, a silk handkerchief, and a tiny face mirror. She turned to her lunchbox for beauty, love, and solace, in her fleeting moments of rest.
The anklets of her firstborn lay in the lowest chamber of the lunchbox: a tiny band of black thread with tinkling bells that Aaji retrieved from the contractor after her baby was crushed under his sugarcane-loaded truck.
A bank. An album
By the time Aaji turned 30, the lunchbox had served as a bank of coins, a storehouse of trinkets for her six children, an album of black of white photographs, a memory box with amulets of her two dead daughters, and a safe house for the bus tickets of her first ever visit to a city.
A cracked skull led Aaji to clamber on a bus in the middle of the night and travel to the city of Pune. That evening, Ajoba smashed an alcohol bottle on her head and left home in a gruff, after which the village women collected money, flagged down the vehicle, and rushed Aaji to the Pune city hospital.
Kaij-Pune. Pune- Kaij. The two bus tickets remained stuck in the lunchbox as memorabilia of Aaji’s survival.
A Shrine
In her last years, Aaji placed the lunchbox on the small shrine of the goddesses she tended, fed, and worshipped. The tiffin box now held worship materials – cotton wick, camphor, Kumkum, a small candle, and a tiny cymbal.
On the morning of Dusshera, Aaji cleaned the lunchbox, filled it with small atta ladoos, and went from home to home, distributing the sweets to her friends and relatives in the village.
That night, Aaji died in her sleep. The family found her on the bed with the lunchbox next to her.
Rain on parched land
“The lunchbox was Aaji’s medal for living and winning a hard life,” Maya told me as we ate lunch in the sugarcane fields.
In her lifetime, Aaji did not have enough food in her household to fill the large containers of the lunchbox. But on the day I heard her story, Maya had packed the heirloom container with bhakri, bhaaji, zunka, thecha, and the softest, most delicate shrikhand.
Aaji’s parched life was built on the hope that there would be rain one day, even if not in her lifetime. The lunchbox was witness to both: the drought and the rain in Aaji’s land.
This short story is based on the lived experiences of women sugarcane cutters of Beed: stories that I heard from Manisha Ghule, a social justice leader who has emerged from the communities she serves.
Manisha is the founder and head of Navchetana Sarvangin Vikas Kendra (NSVK) in Beed, Maharashtra - a movement led by single women from the denotified nomadic tribes.
This story emerged in response to the prompt: The Lunchbox at the
Writing Circle - a space for honouring everyday stories with and
This is such a gentle, beautiful story of love and loss. You bring Aaji to life through your narration of her lunchbox, a treasure trove indeed, of her life's belongings. Your story is a powerful reminder of lives that we don't witness, but must.
This is a stunning piece Manisha. A life story retold through a lunchbox!